Vienna 1900 / In Search of a Modern Style

Between 1890 and 1900, Austria saw a conscious departure from historicism, accompanied by the search for a modern, independent style. Inspiration came from Great Britain, the Netherlands, France, Germany, and Japanese Arts and Crafts. Numerous contemporary purchases of foreign products and Japanese works considered exemplary shaped developments and were deliberately disseminated to schools of Arts and Crafts throughout the monarchy. Works by students also bear witness to the influence of these models.

The founding members of the Vienna Secession adopted the idea of the “unity of the arts” from England, which also accorded artistic status to artistically designed everyday objects. Important representatives of this movement were Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and Joseph Maria Olbrich. Otto Wagner also articulated the central demand of Viennese Modernism for a functional style, vividly implemented in a cupboard designed in 1899, which is considered the first “modern” Viennese piece of furniture.

Initially influenced by Belgian and French Art Nouveau styles, Vienna developed its own distinctive design language from 1900 onwards, based on the local Biedermeier tradition and taking on geometric and abstract features. Moser’s buffet cabinet Der reiche Fischzug [The Rich Catch of Fish] from 1900 marks this shift. At the same time, Adolf Loos pursued an alternative approach that departed from the Secession’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. An example of this is a seating area from the smoking room of the Turnowsky apartment.

(Summary of the text by Christian Witt-Dörring from Christoph Thun-Hohenstein u. a., MAK/Guide Vienna 1900, Design/Arts and Crafts 1890-1938 [on the occasion of the reinstallation of the MAK Permanent Collection], 2013, p. 34f.)