Secessions : Klimt, Stuck, Liebermann

A rich overview of innovative Austrian and German artists at the dawn of modernism.
 
At the end of the nineteenth century, the Secession art movement shed conservative and commercial art traditions to usher in the beginnings of modernism in Austria and Germany. Taking an international yet individualistic approach to art, the rebellious Secessionists eschewed existing exhibitions and government support to embrace artistic freedom. They staged their own shows throughout Europe’s German-speaking regions, which introduced the public to novel art movements like impressionism and symbolism and launched the careers of Franz von Stuck, Gustav Klimt, and Max Liebermann.

Secessions illustrates the artistic diversity within this movement, featuring more than 200 works by some eighty artists from Vienna, Munich, and Berlin, as well as Ferdinand Hodler, Edvard Munch, Auguste Rodin, Giovanni Segantini, and Jan Toorop. This catalog accompanies a 2023 exhibit curated by the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin in cooperation with the Wien Museum.

The Secessions artist groups at the dawn of modernism in a splendid new volume. At the end of the 19th century the term “Secession” stood for the artistic beginnings of modernism. Art was surging forward towards freedom. Avant-garde artists showed their new creative works in the exhibitions of the Secession. In doing so they introduced innovative art movements to the public and helped Impressionism and Symbolism, for example, to achieve a breakthrough in the German-speaking region. The new alliances of artists in the Secession meant the abandonment of traditional artists’ associations and old-fashioned structures, and a new artistic freedom. The most important Secessions in the German region arose in 1892 in Munich, in 1897 in Vienna and in 1899 in Berlin. They are associated to this day with the figures who helped to shape them: Franz von Stuck, Gustav Klimt and Max Liebermann. This volume illustrates their artistic diversity in over 200 works by some 80 artists of the Secessions in Vienna, Munich and Berlin as well as international guests including Hodler, Munch, Rodin, Segantini and Toorop.