Arts and Crafts / Wiener Secession
Vienna 1900 gave
birth to its own form of modernism in the visual
arts, Jugendstil, or art nouveau. As the name
itself indicates, this movement represented a
protest of the younger generation against the
traditional art of their forebears. In 1897 these
younger artists broke with the Kunstverein and the
Viennese art academy and established their own
artistic grouping, the Secession movement. Creating
their own exhibition space in the Secession
building just off Vienna's Ringstrasse, artists
such as Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Richard Gerstl,
and later, Oskar Kokoschka affronted the
aristocratic and bourgeois tastes and sensibilities
of traditional art patrons. Their work is marked by
a pronounced sensuality, often giving way to
explicit sexuality, and a daring use of color and
form.