Biography
Klara Vith is an Austrian contemporary artist, born in 1993 in Vorarlberg, who works principally in letterpress and book-arts and whose practice has come to include relief printing and contemporary woodblock as part of a broader engagement with text, type, and the printed surface. She completed a BA in Information Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Pforzheim and worked in graphic design before relocating to London for an MA in Visual Arts: Book Arts at Camberwell College of Arts (University of the Arts London, 2020–21), the British art-school context in which contemporary letterpress, book-binding, and small-edition print practice are taught at the postgraduate level. After Camberwell she joined New North Press in Hoxton — the long-running East London letterpress workshop founded by Graham Bignell and Richard Ardagh and a principal training environment for British letterpress practitioners — and works as a letterpress printer there alongside teaching at the London College of Communication (LCC) printmaking programme. Her studio practice is principally letterpress, with type-and-text projects that engage with found language fragments, ideas of archiving and re-contextualization, and what she describes as languages of power. The mokuhanga and woodblock-print component of her work is more recent and has come from the broader engagement with relief printing at LCC and Camberwell, where the workshop infrastructure includes both letterpress and Japanese-method woodblock equipment. Her appearance in a Japanese woodblock-print database alongside contemporary mokuhanga practitioners is accounted for by participation in the IMC2024 Echizen juried international exhibition, in which she was listed as a participating artist from Austria — her highest-profile dedicated mokuhanga presentation to date and the entry point through which her work has become visible in the international mokuhanga community. Beyond the IMC exhibition, her recent and upcoming exhibition record includes Internet Cafe (Bregenz, May 2026), Liegt das Gute doch so nah (Wangen, May 2026), a MAP Galerie exhibition in Schruns (November 2026), and a series of project-based works dating from 2018 onward including The Weather Room, HOME IS A FAILED IDEA, The Chair, the Play, the TV is a Place for Dreams, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries selection. She is represented commercially through her own studio site (klaravith.com), and her work has appeared in the Artsy and ArtRabbit gallery databases. Within the dedicated mokuhanga circuit she is best understood as a letterpress and book-arts practitioner whose engagement with the Japanese woodblock method is a recent extension of an already established type-and-text practice rather than as a dedicated mokuhanga career, and the current thin bio in commercial print databases reflects that dual identity rather than a research gap. The published exhibition record will most likely continue to develop principally through the letterpress and book-arts circuit and through the Austrian, London, and Vorarlberg gallery networks rather than through the mokuhanga-specific apparatus of the IMC.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1993
- Nationality
- 🇦🇹Austria
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Theater
- Works Indexed
- 2
Frequently Asked Questions
Klara Vith is an Austrian contemporary artist, born in 1993 in Vorarlberg, who works principally in letterpress and book-arts and whose practice has come to include relief printing and contemporary woodblock as part of a broader engagement with text, type, and the printed surface. She completed a BA in Information Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Pforzheim and worked in graphic design before relocating to London for an MA in Visual Arts: Book Arts at Camberwell College of Arts (University of the Arts London, 2020–21), the British art-school context in which contemporary letterpress, book-binding, and small-edition print practice are taught at the postgraduate level. After Camberwell she joined New North Press in Hoxton — the long-running East London letterpress workshop founded by Graham Bignell and Richard Ardagh and a principal training environment for British letterpress practitioners — and works as a letterpress printer there alongside teaching at the London College of Communication (LCC) printmaking programme. Her studio practice is principally letterpress, with type-and-text projects that engage with found language fragments, ideas of archiving and re-contextualization, and what she describes as languages of power. The mokuhanga and woodblock-print component of her work is more recent and has come from the broader engagement with relief printing at LCC and Camberwell, where the workshop infrastructure includes both letterpress and Japanese-method woodblock equipment. Her appearance in a Japanese woodblock-print database alongside contemporary mokuhanga practitioners is accounted for by participation in the IMC2024 Echizen juried international exhibition, in which she was listed as a participating artist from Austria — her highest-profile dedicated mokuhanga presentation to date and the entry point through which her work has become visible in the international mokuhanga community. Beyond the IMC exhibition, her recent and upcoming exhibition record includes Internet Cafe (Bregenz, May 2026), Liegt das Gute doch so nah (Wangen, May 2026), a MAP Galerie exhibition in Schruns (November 2026), and a series of project-based works dating from 2018 onward including The Weather Room, HOME IS A FAILED IDEA, The Chair, the Play, the TV is a Place for Dreams, and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries selection. She is represented commercially through her own studio site (klaravith.com), and her work has appeared in the Artsy and ArtRabbit gallery databases. Within the dedicated mokuhanga circuit she is best understood as a letterpress and book-arts practitioner whose engagement with the Japanese woodblock method is a recent extension of an already established type-and-text practice rather than as a dedicated mokuhanga career, and the current thin bio in commercial print databases reflects that dual identity rather than a research gap. The published exhibition record will most likely continue to develop principally through the letterpress and book-arts circuit and through the Austrian, London, and Vorarlberg gallery networks rather than through the mokuhanga-specific apparatus of the IMC.
Klara Vith was active born in 1993. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Klara Vith's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Klara Vith's prints frequently feature theater.
Klara Vith is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.
