The Secessionists' work provides in large part the visual representations of the new intellectual and cultural flowering of Vienna around 1900, in fields as diverse as medicine, music, and philosophy. This, in concert with their official journal Ver Sacrum, not only introduced the Austrian capital to their work, but that of contemporary and historical art movements on a global scale. Led at the beginning by Gustav Klimt, the Secessionists gave contemporary art its first dedicated venue in the city.
It was the coalescence of the first movement of artists and designers who were committed to a forward-thinking, internationalist view of the art world, all-encompassing in its embrace and integration of genres and fields, and - highly idealistically - freed from the dictates of entrenched values or prevailing commercial tastes. Max Klinger (1857-1920): Beethoven statue.The formation of the Vienna Secession in 1897 marked, quite accurately, the formal beginning of modern art in Austria - a nation at the time noted for its attachment to a highly conservative tradition. It also proved fundamentally important to Klimt’s further development, as well as that of numerous other participating artists: the ideal of the interplay and aesthetic integration of all artistic disciplines and the collaboration tested in the Beethoven exhibition was successfully continued by the Wiener Werkstätte, among others. Today the Beethoven Frieze is considered one of Klimt’s key works and one of the high points of Viennese Art Nouveau. The XIVth exhibition drew nearly 60,000 visitors, thus becoming one of the Secession’s greatest public successes.An opening in the wall offered a view of Max Klinger’s Beethoven statue, indicating the interplay of architecture, painting (Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze) and sculpture (Klinger’s Beethoven) as soon as the visitor entered. The declared aim of the exhibition was to reunite the separate arts – architecture, painting, sculpture and music – under a common theme: the “work of art” was to emerge from the interplay of the design of the rooms, the wall paintings and sculpture. Klimt’s monumental wall cycle was located in the left-hand aisle, which visitors to the exhibition entered first. In addition to Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, wall paintings and decorations by Alfred Roller, Adolf Böhm, Ferdinand Andri and numerous other artists were presented. The exhibition centered around Max Klinger’s Beethoven statue placed in the main hall.A total of 21 artists collaborated on the exhibition under the direction of Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956).Gustav Klimt (1862-1918): Beethoven frieze.
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