Notable Artists

Gustav Klimt

(Baumgarten, Vienna, 1862 - Vienna, 1918)

Gustav Klimt  began working as a painter while still a student at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts). His early collaboration with Hans Makart (Austria’s reigning art star), lent the young artist a certain prestige. 

Klimt’s commission for three murals representing Jurisprudence, Philosophy, and Medicine at the University of Vienna, on the other hand, made him infamous. When first exhibited, these allegorical nudes so shocked the public that years of protracted protests followed..

It was Klimt’s vision that spurred the founding of the Vienna Secession, a multi-disciplinary group of artists and architects who formally cut ties with the Vienna Academy’s conservatism and historicism in 1897. From the outset, though, Klimt associated less with other painters at the Secession than with the faction that came to be known as the "Stylists": those, like Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, whose primary interest was design and the applied arts. The fact that the Secession included architects and artisans, as well as fine artists constituted a highly unusual mingling of "high" and "low" art forms. Not surprisingly, friction soon developed between the Stylists and the "Naturalists," as Klimt's opponents came to be called. These ideological differences came to a head in 1905, when Klimt and his allies severed their ties to the group.

After the Secession split, Klimt's sole significant organizational affiliation was with the Wiener Werkstätte (which he helped to found in 1903). For the most part, he retreated into the private sphere, seeking support from sympathetic patrons. On two occasions, however, he reverted to his former leadership role, serving as a key collaborator in the organization of the 1908 and 1909 "Kunstschauen" (Art Shows). Klimt was a tireless champion and advocate of younger artists—most notably Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele—through the Kunstschauen as well as personal contacts. Klimt's premature death in 1918, from pneumonia following a stroke, was mourned by the entire Austrian art world.

Heinrich Lefler

(Vienna, 1863 - Vienna, 1919)

The son of a painter, Heinrich Lefler received his formal training at the academies of fine arts in Vienna and Munich. Along with his future brother-in-law, Joseph Urban, Lefler broke away from the conservative Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1899 to found the association of artists and architects known as the Hagenbund. Between 1900 and 1903, he worked as Gustav Mahler’s director of productions at the Vienna Court Opera.

Lefler and Urban, (who was also accomplished in set design) were frequent artistic collaborators. Among their shared projects were postage stamps, murals, the design of children’s theatrical productions (in cooperation with the director and librettist Camillo Walzel), furniture, and large-scale public events such as the 1905 Schiller Festival Parade and the 1908 procession along the Ringstraße to mark the Emperor’s 60th Jubilee. 

Josef Maria Olbrich

(Opava, Austrian Silesia, 1867 - Düsseldorf, Germany, 1908)

Josef Maria Olbrich excelled at Vienna’s University of Applied Arts and Academy of Fine Arts, and when his studies were done, established himself as one of Austria’s preeminent 20th-century architects. Along with Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann, and Koloman Moser, Olbrich broke with the Viennese establishment to cofound the Vienna Secession in 1897. His design for the group’s headquarters and exhibition hall, the Secession Building, is emblematic of the movement it housed. 

In 1899, at the invitation of the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Olbrich moved to the Darmstadt Artist’s Colony (situated in nearby Mathildenhöhe), for which he designed and built a number of galleries and houses (including his own). A trio of houses by Olbrich were the primary focus of Darmstadt’s 1904 exhibition, the second of only two times the colony opened to the public.

In 1900, Olbrich obtained Hessian citizenship and was appointed Professor of Architecture by the Grand Duke. He spent the first years of the twentieth century experimenting with the applied arts, designing furniture, pottery, musical instruments, and book bindings along with buildings. The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair featured a much-admired Olbrich Pavilion, and fellow architect Frank Lloyd Wright helped him secure membership in the American Institute of Architects. Olbrich was also an early member of the Deutscher Werkbund, invited to join upon its founding in 1907. He died the following year of leukemia, aged only 40.

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