A Vienna this winter is all for Gustav Klimt: the genius of painting is an absolute protagonist with exhibitions and celebrations for the 150th anniversary of birth, which takes place in 2012.
The first, opened a few days at the Belvedere, houses until March 4 of next year the largest collection of works by the artist, including "The Kiss", one of the most famous canvases in the world, considered the symbol of the era that saw the start of modernism. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the work of Klimt is presented together with the congenial architect and designer Josef Hoffmann.
The intense collaboration between the two characters mainly defined the exhibition inspired by Beethoven (1902) at the Secession of Vienna, and in the realization of the Palazzo Stoclet (1905–1912) in Brussels, of the new parameters for the work of total art in Europe. The exhibition examines this current, also deepening their links with the Wiener Werkstätte, the circle of artists who considered themselves the alternative to the traditional approach to art.
The exhibition could therefore be the prelude to a itinerary in Vienna from the beginning of the century, to the (re)discovery of Jugendstil, the Viennese Art Nouveau style born between the nineteenth and twentieth century, inspired by the new currents that began to abandon architectural historicism to approach Modernism.
A style closely linked to the Secession, a circle of artists who considered themselves the alternative to the traditional approach to art and, together with the Wiener Werkstätte, began to develop the concept of total art.
The Viennese Art Nouveau style, also known as the "style of the Secession", can be admired above all in the exhibition building of this artistic circle, the Secession, built between 1897 and 1898 on projects by Joseph Maria Olbrich near the fruit and vegetable market Naschmarkt. This was the first exhibition building dedicated to modern art in Mitteleuropa, and the palace still houses the Beethoven Fregio by Gustav Klimt.
Among the masterpieces of the style of the Secession there are also the buildings of the architect Otto Wagner, who preferred a very geometric variant of the Art Nouveau style: the Liberty can be admired in the residential buildings along the Wienzeile, in the Cassa di Risparmio ZIP along the Ringstrasse, in the stations, bridges and railings of the ex-metropolitan of Vienna, as well as in the famous Church am Steinhof.
In these architectural works there is also the tendency of the Viennese Art Nouveau style to make use of ornaments especially for exterior decorations: very popular were marble, glass, majolica, metal applications, colored stuccoing and gilding.
