It was only after the site was transferred to a plot on Friedrichstrasse that the Municipal Council granted permission for âthe erection of a provisional exhibition pavilion for the period of the next ten yearsâ (minutes of the meeting of the Municipal Council of 17 November, 1897). A site along the Ringstrasse was originally chosen, but Olbrichâs designs met with violent reaction on the part of the Municipal Council. The Secession members commissioned the hardly 30-year-old architect Joseph Maria Olbrich, who was at the time a member of Otto Wagnerâs atelier, to design the building, which was to become a key work of Viennese Art Nouveau. ![]() ![]() A large part of this exhibition was devoted to the arts and crafts thus fulfilling the first steps of the Secession group, toward equal recognition of art and handicrafts. These works were then donated to various public galleries. Over 57,000 attendances were recorded and the funds made through these exhibitions were used to buy works of art from within each exhibition. Artists represented in the associations premier included Giovanni Segantini, Ferdinand Khnopff, Constantin Meunier, Puvis De Chavanne, Auguste Rodin, Franz von Stuck and Max Klinger amongst others. Our exhibition is bound to make an epoch making effect on Vienna in the artistic field. For we are a party and intend to remain a party until the stagnating standards of art in Vienna are revived, and Austrian artists and the Austrian public have produced a picture worthy of the modern movement in art. The preface to the catalogue expressed their aims: In our first exhibitions we were at pains to show the modern art of foreign countries to the public, in order to set it a higher standard whereby to appraise our native productions⦠It is obviously no part of our intention to give a comprehensive view of contemporary art all we want to do is exhibit the officers of troops who are right up in the firing line. Their first exhibition was held in the greenhouses of the Society of Horticulture and Klimt designed a poster depicting Theseus and the Minotaur under the protective gaze of Athena who was to become a recurrent figure throughout Klimtâs involvement with the Secessionists. Photo: Photographic archives of the Austrian National Library, Moriz Nähr There was no strict coda or written philosophy attached to the Vienna Secession but to strive for âart as lifeâ or an art which did not distinguish between âgreat artâ and the crafts, or art for the rich and art for the poor, was high on their agenda. Left to right: Anton Stark, Gustav Klimt (in armchair), Kolo Moser (in front of Klimt, wearing hat), Adolf Böhm, Maximilian Lenz (reclining), Ernst Stöhr (with hat), Wilhelm List, Emil Orlik (sitting), Maximilian Kurzweil (wearing cap), Leopold Stolba, Carl Moll (reclining), Rudolf Bacher. ![]() Group portrait of Vienna Secession members on the occasion of the XIV exhibition in 1902. ![]() This conflict between new ideals and the establishment came to a head in 1897 when forty members of the Kunstlerhaus seceded and founded their own association with Gustav Klimt as their president. The Kunstlerhaus was, in Gustav Klimtâs eyes, directed by commercial motivations which were limiting in their disregard of foreign artists and maintained art as something separate from the lives of the majority of the Austrian people. The Vienna Secession grew out of a dissatisfaction with the traditional practices of the Kunstlerhausgenossenschaft an association which could have been called the Vienna Academie.
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