Vienna Secession Building

The Vienna Secession Building was designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich near the turn of the 20th century (1898). The building housed the work of a group of artists called the secessionists, who turned away from the conservative art aesthetic of the time to tread on new territory and move into the tumult of the modern world.

Gustav Klimt was the leading figure of the secessionist movement along with Koloman Moser. Above the Secession Building’s outside entrance is the phrase “To every age its art, to every art its freedom.” The group’s leaders and members turned to modernist and expressionist ways of presenting ideas and concepts about the self, as well as the human mind and body. The major work in the museum is Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, which is a large mural along the top of the wall in the museum’s entrance hall. The mural is indicative of Klimt’s style. He used gold paint and nude (sometimes pregnant) figures to express the ideas of the time inspired by Sigmund Freud. The scale and scope of the building and of the Beethoven Frieze echo the grand concepts of Gesamtkunstwerk. The building was damaged by a German bombshell and set afire by their army in 1944. A refurbishment began in 1963 and the building has been continually updated.

Vienna Secession Building: What’s Behind the Scenes, Vienna Unwrapped. July 1st, 2023. Accessed July 21st, 2023. https://www.vienna-unwrapped.com/vienna-secession/.