Beauty and the Abyss.

Klimt.Schiele.Wagner.Moser.

Portraits of the protagonists

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner and Koloman Moser all died in 1918. It is impossible to imagine the “fin de siècle Vienna” known the world over today without these four major personalities from the worlds of art, architecture and design. The great watershed moment that came with the end of the First World War, the fall of the Dual Monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic of Austria spelled the end of an era for art in Vienna as well.

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt, born in 1862, studied at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule in the 1870s. Still thoroughly infused with the spirit of his historic forebears, Klimt was seemingly predestined to work on the interiors of the monumental buildings lining the Ringstrasse boulevard. He was an entrepreneur and co-founder of a company of painters – after all, only as part of a team would he be in a position to secure commissions to work on such prestigious projects as the newly-built Burgtheater and the gigantic Kunsthistorisches Museum. Today, Klimt’s painting is synonymous with that particularly refined branch of Viennese art which celebrates beauty, and has become enormously popular in past decades. His landscapes and portraits of women elevated Austrian Art Nouveau painting to its apex.

When a group of ambitious young artists in 1897 declared their intention to part company with the conservative Künstlerhaus and set up their own artists’ association known as the Secession, it was Gustav Klimt who was elected their first president. Integrated into Viennese cultural circles and society, he also had very close ties with Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser. Many of his patrons, particularly those that commissioned his portraits of females, came from assimilated Jewish families who had been instrumental in Vienna’s rise as a global capital and identified strongly with the inspiration and aesthetics of the modernist era – families such as the Wittgensteins, the Bloch-Bauers, the Zuckerkandls and Gallias. Klimt’s painting celebrated the upper echelons of a liberal, cosmopolitan culture in which the private and the psychological played a major role. The retreat from portrayals of social realities into the realms of the aesthetic is particularly well illustrated by Klimt’s pictures.

The Belvedere owns the world’s largest collection of works by Klimt with 24 paintings by the great artist, including his world-famous piece The Kiss, which is on permanent display in the Upper Belvedere. One of Klimt’s key works, Death and Life, is on show at the Leopold Museum alongside numerous other paintings by the Art Nouveau genius. The Beethoven Frieze at the Secession is another Klimt highlight.

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (born 1890) was the youngest of the four key figures of Viennese Modernism who passed away in 1918 – by a considerable distance. Klimt’s influence on Schiele’s early work is very clear, as demonstrated by the younger man’s shared fascination with depictions of women that revealed their innermost thoughts and sensibilities. Schiele took the new body ideal of the young, if not still adolescent, protagonist found in Art Nouveau and took it to an ecstatic and demonic new level, most frequently using himself as a model.

Particularly in his depictions of eroticism and sexuality, Schiele’s art is driven by a curiosity free from taboos, as well as stark exhibitionism. The way he posed for the camera was also new, with characteristic hand arrangements and gestures and a body language that correlated with the radical expressionism of the time. Although Schiele broke ranks with the beautiful curves and elegance of Viennese Art Nouveau, he remained faithful to the underlying lines and opulence of color that defined it. This may account for his popularity in the present day, particularly among much younger audiences. Everything produced by Schiele was created by an artist who would not live to see his 29th birthday. His oeuvre is infused with introspection, self-presentation and a questioning of the body and sexuality – topics that are also at the forefront of present-day contemporary art.

The Leopold Museum at the MuseumsQuartier has the world’s largest and most important collections of works by Egon Schiele, with more than 40 paintings and around 180 works on paper in its holdings. It also has its own Egon Schiele document center which takes an academic look at this exceptional artist’s oeuvre. The Belvedere and the Albertina also have their fair share of masterpieces by the famous expressionist.

Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner was the eldest of the quartet of artists that died in 1918. He embodied the spirit of the times, perfectly uniting entrepreneurialism, urban planning and design. Wagner was much more than an architect. In today’s parlance he would be known as a designer, urbanist and developer. Born in 1841, he had an extensive education and knew every trick in the historicist handbook and was even involved in the development of the Ringstrasse at the start of his career. These early experiences of such a large-scale and expansive urban renewal and planning project – right at the heart of a European empire – would have a significant influence on his creative development. Otto Wagner broke free from the shackles of historicism, casting off any obligation to reference past styles and adorn buildings with ornamentation. He took the forward-looking elements of the Ringstrasse period that worked for him, adopting them as the foundation for a new contemporary era in Vienna.

Otto Wagner believed that functional objects required no more and no less design than was required for them to be of effective use. At the same time he was interested in new shapes that reflected the dynamism of the city and its faith in progress – from a glass bathtub, to the Stadtbahn railway network created to serve a city whose population was forecast to grow to four million. Although Wagner was a designer with a keen eye for the overall picture, he applied his creativity to details in the same way. He was also a highly influential teacher. As a professor of architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts he influenced several generations of students who then went on to work in the former crown lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

And as an urban planner, Otto Wagner left behind a visible legacy in Vienna. His main works are the Austrian Post Savings Bank, the Church of St. Leopold at Steinhof, the apartment buildings on the Wienzeile, the Court Pavilion in Hietzing and the Stadtbahn Pavilions on Karlsplatz. Parts of his grandiose Stadtbahn railway (now sections of the U4 and U6 underground lines and the S45 S-Bahn rapid transit line) are still in use today.

Koloman Moser

Kolo Moser was born in 1868, making him a generation younger than Wagner, and was one of the originators of Viennese Art Nouveau. Today he would be called a graphic designer, as well as a product designer, interior designer and exhibition designer. Moser was the creative force behind the presentation of numerous Secession exhibitions and other shows over the years. From wallpaper to book design, stationery, furnishings, silver vessels, stained-glass windows and posters, he had a hand in everything – including logos, which did not even have a name in Moser’s day. He was also a painter, although this area of his creative output was largely eclipsed by his acclaimed work as a designer.

Moser’s early Jugendstil output is heavily influenced by curved, floral and sometimes riotous shapes, with close echoes of French and Belgian Art Nouveau. He soon went on to develop a comparatively “cool” and pared-down geometric design style. The products that feature it are today regarded as highlights of Viennese Modernism. In 1903 he founded Wiener Werkstätte with Josef Hoffmann and a number of other like-minded individuals, to sell decorative art pieces to an exclusive clientele. The overarching notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art gave special impetus to Wiener Werkstätte as a productive cooperative that designed and realized entire apartment interiors, ensembles and even palaces down to the very last detail. A good part of the highly refined design and the effective use of selected and precious materials – Wiener Werkstätte’s calling card – bears Kolo Moser’s signature.

Works by this universal artist and others can be seen at the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art as well as the Leopold Museum. The MAK is also the owner of the Wiener Werkstätte company archive. Moser also designed the stained glass windows at the Church of St. Leopold at Steinhof.

Info:

b2b.viennesemodernism.info

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Last updated January 2018

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