In this juried selection, it was not uncommon that impressionist and modernist works were rejected in favour of the prevalent naturalism of academic painting. Any established artist at the time belonged to the Kunstlerhaus and each year their work was either selected or rejected for public exhibitions. One of the earliest Ringstrasse buildings, the Kunstlerhaus was designed in the style of an Italian Renaissance villa and it became Vienna’s main exhibition hall often under the presidency of conservative bureaucrats. Two principle institutions dominated the Visual Arts in the years prior to the secession : The Akademie de bildende Kunste (the Academy of fine arts) and the Kunstlerhaus Genessenschaft – a private exhibiting society founded in 1861. It would be the new exhibition hall for the Vienna Secession built by Joseph Olbrich and above it’s door a motto for the age: “To every age its art, to every art its freedom”. Eventually a new building unlike anything ever seen would appear just off the Ringstrasse signalling a rejection of historicism. It is in this environment that the first seeds of the Secession movement began to germinate, led by a group of artists who searched for a synthesis of the arts and a place where their new works could be exhibited. There was a Neo-Greek parliament, a gothic City Hall, Neo-Baroque apartment buildings and most importantly only two exhibition bodies favouring classical-style art. Labelled as a ‘Potemkin City’ in the Secession magazine ‘Ver Sacrum’, the Ringstrasse came to symbolize the stifling attitude towards the arts that predominated in a society content with recycling classical styles rather than embracing the new modernist styles that were budding in the rest of Europe. Top 10 Paintings | 6 | Fighting Temeraire by J.M.W.Take a stroll along the Ringstrasse today the former location of Vienna’s city walls, and one finds a pastiche of 18th century neo-classical architecture built mostly as a showcase for the grandeur of the Habsburg Empire.Top 10 Paintings | 5 | The Scream by Edvard Munch.

Top 10 Paintings | 4 | Starry Night Over the Rh ô ne by Vincent Van Gogh.Top 10 Paintings | 3 | In the Well of the Great Wave of Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.

Top 10 Paintings | 2 | Composition VII by Wassily Kandinsky.

Top 10 Paintings | 1 | The Kiss by Gustav Klimt.

See them here.Ĭheck out all of the Top 10 Paintings blog posts!

Many of Klimt's 'golden phase' pieces have been brought to life incredibly with live models by photographer Inge Prader.

The Austrian mint have honoured Klimt's The Kiss by putting it on a €50 coin.

Here's an article with 15 things you should know about The Kiss.

If you love this sumptuous Art Nouveau masterpiece as much as we do, then you're in luck! You can buy a beautiful foiled journal, foiled pocket journal or foiled sketchbook as well as an iPhone 5 case, all with this beautiful image on. Location: Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna Klimt’s extraordinary creative energy, expressive use of line and dominant use of ornament captured the avant-garde spirit that helped develop the abstract aesthetic that followed. In Vienna Sigmund Freud’s (1856–1939) analytical methods of exploring the subconscious were topical and Klimt’s intensely experimental, controversial work explored the subconscious and emotional impulses and desires. The development of Secessionism reflected a profound historical and ideological revolution that characterized the fin-de-siècle. This aesthetic conformed to the European-wide Art Nouveau movement, which sought unity in the applied arts. When Klimt and his colleagues formed the Vienna Secession in 1897 they were announcing a formal separation from the traditional, academic art in favour of highly decorative styles. The man is decorated in the cold colours and geometrical angular patterns that symbolize masculinity the kneeling female is represented in warm colours by swirls and circles, the symbols of femininity. The lovers are encased in an embrace of golden fabric. The Kiss achieves a balance between emotion and ornamentation. Klimt had experimented with using gold in some of his earlier works, such as Pallas Athene (1898) and Judith I (1901), but he now started to use increasingly sumptuous ornamentation on a regular basis. The Kiss (1907–08), possibly Klimt's most famous work, is a shining example of his ‘ golden phase’. One of the founders of the Vienna Secession movement, Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) is often regarded as the greatest painter of the Art Nouveau period.

Gustav klimt periods vienna secession