After her artistic education, that she received from Ludwig Michalek at the school of arts for women and girls in Vienna, she married the manufacturer Hugo Steiner in 1904. He was a fellow student of Karl Kraus and from 1903 on the employer of architect Adolf Loos.
As an artist, Lilly first appeared before the public in 1917. She was a corresponding respectively extraordinary member of the Hagenbund and member in the etching club of Viennese artists. In 1927 the couple Steiner moved to Paris where Lilly’s husband became office manager of a Knize branch. In Paris she received the acceptance that she missed in Austria.
An important place among her oeuvre took female and children portraits as well as the motherhood subject. After 1937 she dealt with political ongoings. Steiner created various illustrations, at which her expression studies of conductors and artists such as Alban Berg, Arturo Toscanini and Artistide Maillol must be highlighted. As for the cycles of graphic works the lithographs for Arnold Schönberg’s “Gurrelieder” and those dealing with the motherhood subject are especially well-known.
Lilly Steiner died on 3 October 1961 in Paris.
