1930 The second of four daughters, Gertie Fröhlich is born on 29 June into a bourgeois family in Červený Kláštor, Slovakia.
1944 Slovakia’s German-speaking population is expelled. Fröhlich and her family flee to relatives in the Austrian town of Vöcklabruck.
1944–1949 Attends high school in Gmunden and subsequently studies at a teacher training school in Vöcklabruck.
1949–1952 Against her father’s wishes, she studies painting at the Graz School of Arts and Crafts under Rudolf Szyszkowitz; she is forced to support herself financially.
1952 Moves to Vienna, where she studies at the Academy of Fine Arts under Albert Paris Gütersloh, graduating in 1955. She then spends a year studying set design under the tutelage of Emil Pirchan. Fröhlich works as a live-in nanny for Friedrich Heer. She embarks on study trips to Rome and Pompeii, turning her attention to Greek and Roman history and mythology.
1953–1955 Takes a summer job at the organization Katholische Aktion, where she meets Otto Mauer. Fröhlich facilitates his taking over of Otto Kallir’s renowned Neue Galerie. Galerie St. Stephan opens in 1954. Fröhlich brings in artists as well as curates and organizes the first exhibitions. In December 1955, she starts working as a freelancer for Austrian newspaper Die Furche and, in 1956, for Wochenpresse. Works as a costume and set designer for Vienna’s Youth Theater.
1954 Receives the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts’s Abendakt award.
1956 Moves into her apartment at Sonnenfelsgasse 11. Marries Markus Prachensky. Birth of son Nikolaus. She subsequently gives up her role at Galerie St. Stephan.
1957 Begins a relationship with Peter Kubelka. Receives a scholarship to study in Sweden. The pair spends 1958/59 studying in Paris and Stockholm.
1959 Birth of daughter Marieli.
1960 Divorce from Markus Prachensky. Fröhlich takes on freelance work; from 1964, she is employed in the graphic design team at Austria’s public broadcaster (ORF).
1963 Designs the program for an experimental film festival curated by Peter Konlechner and Peter Kubelka and hosted by TU Wien in cooperation with Canyon Cinema.
1964 Creates the Austrian Film Museum’s corporate identity and its logo, the Zyphius, as well as designs its programs. Fröhlich begins designing film posters for the museum (producing over 100 between 1964 and 1984).
1967–1969 Fröhlich has multiple stints in New York, where she works as a graphic designer and book designer for publisher Holt, Rinehart & Winston. She gets to know other artists living in the US, including Kiki Kogelnik, Milton Glaser, La Mamma Group, and Roy Lichtenstein.
1974 Exhibition of Fröhlich’s posters at the Austrian Film Museum and solo exhibition of her watercolors and drawings at Galerie am Rabensteig.
1975–1979 The British Film Institute exhibits her poster designs at the National Film Theatre in London (1975 and 1978). Solo exhibitions at Alles was Flügel hat fliegt [Everything with Wings Flies], a gallery on Ruprechtsplatz (1976), and again at Galerie am Rabensteig. Her film posters win at the Hollywood Reporter’s Annual Key Art Awards in Los Angeles (1977, 1978, and 1979) and are acknowledged by the California Museum of Science and Industry. Creates initial designs for her gingerbread figures.
1982 Awarded the City of Vienna’s art prize. Accompanies a team from the University of Vienna’s Egyptological Institute on excavation trips to Egypt to draw unearthed objects (1982–1988).
1985–1988 Solo exhibitions at Galerie Peter Pakesch in Vienna (1985), Galerie Schwarz auf Weiss in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg (1986), and at the Atelier Galerie Vöcklabruck (1988). Works with Oswald and Ingrid Wiener at Exil, the couple’s bohemian restaurant in Berlin. Takes part in André Heller’s project LUNA LUNA in Hamburg, designs a window display for Tiffany’s Chicago, and her edible art is displayed at the Branca Gallery Chicago (1987). Her gingerbread figures are featured in The Confectioner’s Art exhibition at the American Craft Museum in New York (1988). Takes part in a group exhibition at Christine König Galerie (1990).
1993 Awarded an honorary professorship.
2005 To mark Fröhlich’s 75th birthday, a retrospective and catalog of her film posters are organized by Vienna’s Galerie Ulysses.
2017–2020 Relocates to Baden, where she dies on 17 May 2020.