1. Vienna Seccession
Germany and Austria
In 1897 a group of Artists, such as Otto Wagner and his gifted
students, Josef Hoffmann and Josef Olbrich, with Gustav Klimt,
Koloman Moser and others aspired to the renaissance of the arts
and crafts and to bring more abstract and purer forms to the
designs of buildings and furniture, glass and metalwork, following
the concept of total work of art and to do so they tried to bring
together Symbolists, Naturalists, Modernists, and Stylists.

2. • They gave birth to another form of modernism
in the visual arts and they named their own
new movement: Secession (Wiener
Secession). As the name indicates, this
movement represented a protest, of the
younger generation against the traditional art
of their forebears, a "separation" from the
past towards the future. The first chairman
was Gustav Klimt.

3. • To pursue their goal they created their own
exhibition space: the Secession building just off
Vienna's Ringstrasse and the architect would be
Josef Maria Olbrich.
• But the Vienna Secession promoted their design
aesthetic with exhibition posters and its own
journal, Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). The journal
housed reproductions, poetry illustrations,
graphic art, decorative borders, object design,
and cutting-edge conceptions for layout.

4. • Starting with the first exhibition in November 1898, the
Vienna Secession Building presented works of the most
important artists of the time as:
• Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Maria Olbrich, Max
Klinger, Walter Crane, Eugene Grasset, Signac, Charles
Robert Ashbee, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Degas, Arnold
Bocklin, Giovanni Segantini, Auguste Rodin, Edvard Munch,
van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Vuillard, Bonnard, Redon,
Gauguin, Otto Wagner, ...
• and also a good proportion of Belgian Artists as:
• Fernand Khnopff, Constantin Meunier, Felicien Rops, Theo
van Rysselberghe, George Minne,

5. • On 19th May, 1903 another association, the Wiener Werkstätte (German for The
"Vienna Workshop") was registered in Vienna . The founders, Josef Hoffmann and
Koloman Moser, both members of the Vienna Secession, wanted to provide an
outlet for graduates from the Kunstgewerbeschule.
• In 1905, the ongoing conflict between the naturalists, who had clung to many of
the Kunstlerhaus tenets from the beginning of the Secession Movement, and the
stylists finally proved irreconcilable.
• At that time Klimt, Auchentaller, Boehm, Hoffmann, Moser and Roller, seceded
from the Secession on the grounds that they could no longer be associated with
the more realistic naturalists who refused to commit themselves to the "total work
of art", a fundamental premise of the Secessionist Movement.
• The "Klimt Group" held their exhibitions in 1908 in the Kunstschau, a temporary
pavilion built by Josef Hoffmann, and the year represents the high-point in the
decorative phase of late Art Nouveau.

6. …..

7. • Take a stroll along the Ringstrasse today; the former location of Vienna’s
city walls, and one finds a pastiche of neo-classical architecture built in the
late 18th century built mostly as a showcase for the grandeur of the
Habsburg Empire. Labeleled as a ‘Potemkin City’ in the Secession
magazine ‘Ver Sacrum’, the Ringstrasse came to symbolize the stifling
attitude towards the arts that predominated in a society content with
recycling classical styles rather than embracing the new modernist styles
that were budding in the rest of Europe. There was a neo-greek
parliament, a gothic City Hall, neo-baroque apartment buildings and most
importantly only two exhibition bodies favouring classical-style art. It is in
this environment that the first seeds of the Secession movement began to
germinate, led by a group of artists who searched for a synthesis of the
arts and a place where their new works could be exhibited. Eventually a
new building unlike anything ever seen would appear just off the
Ringstrasse signalling a rejection of historicism. It would be the new
exhibiton hall for the Vienna Secession built by Joseph Olbrich and above
it’s door a motto for the age: “To every age its art, to every art its
freedom” .

8. • Art historians have somewhat neglected the topic of the
Vienna Secession because of its apparent lack of a specific
program.Yet it was precisely its pluralist approach to the
arts which made the group unique. From the onset, the
Vienna Secession brought together Naturalists, Modernists,
Impressionists and cross-pollinated among all disciplines
forming a total work of art; a Gesamkunstwerk. In this
respect, the Secession drew inspiration from William
Morris and the English Arts and Crafts movement which
sought to re-unite fine and applied arts. Like Morris, the
Secessionists spurned 19th century manufacturing
techniques and favored quality handmade objects,
believing that a return to handwork could rescue society
from the moral decay caused by industrialization.

9. In spite of their critique of industrialization,
they did not completely reject the classicism
which had stifled it’s artists in the previous
decades. Klimt turned to classic symbols a
metaphor for the struggle against historicism
and repression of the instinctual nature of
man. In the first secession poster, he uses
the myth of Theseus and his slaying of the
minotaur in order to liberate the youth of
Athens, though here Athena is not a
protector of the polis as Klimt had depicted
her nine years earlier in his panel paintings
of the Kunsthistoriches museum. Now Klimt
presents her as liberator of the arts,
overseeing the conquest of historicism and
inherited culture by the new generation of
artists. In another drawing for Ver Sacrum
titled ‘Nuda Veritas’, Athena holds an empty
mirror to modern man, signifying a call for
introspection. In both cases, Klimt
subversibly distorts the myth of Athena using
it as a bridge between the past and the
present.

10. • The influence of Japanese design cannot be understated in relation to the
Secession. ‘Japonism’ had swept through europe at the end of the
eighteenth century and french artists like Cezanne and Van Gogh; both of
whom were avid collectors of woodblock prints were quick to incorporate
elements in their work. When Japonism arrived in Austria, The Viennese
were also not immune to its influence. The Vienna International
Exposition of 1873 featured a Japanese display complete with a shinto
shrine and Japanese garden and hundreds of art objects. Japanese design
was quickly incorporated by the Secessionists for its restrained use of
decoration, it’s preference for natural materials over artifice, the
preference for handwork over machine-made, and its balance of negative
and positive space. In a way, the secessionists saw in Japanese design their
ideals of a ‘Gesamkunstwerk’, whereby design was seamlessly
incorporated into everyday life. So strong were these ties that they
devoted the Secession exhibit of 1903 to Japanese art.

12. BURKHARD MANGOLD (1873-1950)
EIDG SÄNGERFEST. 1905

14. Ver Sacrum April 1899

16. Bertold Löffler 1907

19. 1908

22. Alfred_Roller poster

23. Fromme’s Kalender, 1912-13

24. VER SACRUM
• Ver Sacrum (‘Sacred Spring’ in Latin) was the official magazine of
the Vienna Secession from 1898 to 1903. It pioneered new techniques in
graphic design such as the use of modular grid system and custom
designed typography. This and its unique square format would be a great
influence on the Dutch graphic design in the 1920′s, in particular the
publication Wendingen. In the first two years, the magazine was published
monthly in a run of approximately 500 with the intention of only being
circulated among the members of the association. From third year
onwards, the magazine was published twice a year instead of once a
month, and in a shorter run. From the onset, Ver Sacrum upheld the
Vienna Secession’s idea of a ‘Gesamkunstwerk’ (a total work of art)
whereby all fields of the the arts were covered. The magazine included
contributions by artists as well as prominent writers such as Rainer Maria
Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Maurice Maeterlinck, Knut Hamsun, Otto
Julius Bierbaum, Richard Dehmel, Ricarda Huch, Conrad Ferdinand
Meyer, Josef Maria Auchentaller and Arno Holz. Each issue featured the
the work of a particular artist; the Koloman Moser issue of 1899 being
the most sought after by collectors.

25. 1898- Heft 1. Cover by Alfred Roller.

26. 1898- Heft 2. Cover by Koloman Moser

27. 1898, Heft 3. Cover by Gustav Klimt

28. 1898, heft 7 . Cover by Alfred Roller.

29. 1898- Heft 11. Cover by Alphonse
Mucha

30. 1899- Heft 4. Cover by Koloman Moser

31. 1899- heft 5. Cover by Alfred Roller.

32. 1899- Heft 7. Cover by Josef Hoffmann

33. Monograms for artists of the Vienna Secession. Published in the XIV catalogue for the group, 1902

34. • VIENNA SECESSION: (SECESSIONSTIL) 3/04/1897 marks the stormy protest at the Kunstlerhaus
where younger artists wanted to break from the traditions. Designer-Artists Gustav Klimt (1862-
1918) / Kolmon Moser (1868-1918) and architects J.M Olbrich (1867-1908) & Josef Hoffmann
(1870-1956) were key proponents of the movement.
•
• Although a counter-movement, secession’s connection with French Nouveau has the centralized
idealized female figure, swooping floral forms, but they abstracted their subject in their own
manner, moving towards geometricism. Their geometry was not mechanical but rather subtly
organic.
•
• Secession was all about clean, simple, sans serif lettering ranging from flat blocky slabs to fluid
calligraphic forms. Later on designers moved away from the French floral style to flat shapes and
greater simplicity.
•
•
• Ver Sacrum (Sacred Springs) 1898-1903 was a design lab more than a magazine to popularize the
Secession agenda. Sold 300 magazines every month with a total print run 600 only.
•
• Ads were specially designed so as not to upset the magazine’s overall look. (Target marketing starts
here). Ver Sacrum combined high production standards, with great emphasis on negative space,
having a square format, and experimented with image, text, and ornament.