About this product
The Vienna Secession was founded on 3 April 1897 by artist Gustav Klimt, designer Koloman Moser, architects Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich, Max Kurzweil, Wilhelm Bernatzik and others. The architect Otto Wagner joined the group shortly after it was founded. The goals stated at the founding included establishing contact and an exchange of ideas with artists outside Austria, disputing artistic nationalism, renewing the decorative arts; creating a “total art”, that unified painting, architecture, and the decorative arts; and, in particular, opposing the domination of the official Vienna Academy of the Arts, the Vienna Künstlerhaus, and official art salons, with its traditional orientation toward Historicism.
The movement took its name from Munich Secession movement that was founded in 1892. The goals of the new movement in Vienna were expressed by the literary critic Hermann Bahr in the first issue of the new journal begun by the group, called Ver Sacrum (“Sacred Spring”). Bahr wrote, “Our art is not a combat of modern artists against those of the past, but the promotion of the arts against the peddlers who pose as artists and who have a commercial interest in not letting art bloom. The choice between commerce and art is the issue at stake in our Secession. It is not a debate over aesthetics, but a confrontation between two different spiritual states.”[1]
At the beginning, the Secession had fifty members, and at its first elected the painter Gustav Klimt as its president. Other founding or early members included the architect Josef Hoffmann, the designer Koloman Moser, the designer and architect Joseph Maria Olbrich, and the painters Max Kurzweil and Alphonse Mucha,[2] who resided in Paris and was already famous for his Art Nouveau posters.[1] The established painter Rudolf von Alt, eighty-five years old, was chosen as the Honorary President of the group, and he led a delegation with an invitation to the Emperor Franz-Joseph to attend the first Exposition.[1]
The first architectural project of the Secession was the creation of an exhibit space which would introduce international artists and art movements to Vienna. The architect was Joseph Maria Olbrich, a student of Otto Wagner; and his domed gallery building, with a sculptural frieze over the entrance, in the center of Vienna, became the symbol of the movement. It was the first dedicated gallery of contemporary art in the city.[3] This helped make the French Impressionists and others familiar to the Viennese public.
The 14th Secession exhibition in 1902, designed by Josef Hoffmann and dedicated to Ludwig van Beethoven, was especially famous. A statue of Beethoven by Max Klinger stood at the center, with Klimt’s Beethoven frieze mounted around it. The Klimt frieze has been restored and can be seen in the gallery today.
Split within the SecessionEdit
In 1899, Olbrich left Vienna to join the Darmstadt Artists’ Colony. In 1900, he obtained Hessian citizenship and did not work in Austria again.
In 1903, Hoffmann and Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte as a fine-arts society with the goal of reforming the applied arts (arts and crafts). In 1907, Wiener Werkstätte and Hoffmann personally became founding members of Deutscher Werkbund.
An important division soon emerged inside the Secession between those who wished to give precedence to the painters and the traditional fine arts, and others, including Klimt, Hoffmann, Wagner, Moser and others who favored equal treatment for the decorative arts. This dispute came to a head in 1905 when a prominent painter in the group, Carl Moll, proposed that the Secession purchase the Gallery Miethke, as an outlet for its work. This was supported by Klimt, Wagner, Hoffmann, Moser, and others. The issue was put to a vote by the members, and Klimt and his supporters lost by a single vote. On June 14, 1905, Klimt, Hoffmann, Moser and a group of other artists resigned from the Secession.
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