Vienna Secession

In 1897 Gustav Klimt and a group of painters, designers and architects broke away from Vienna's conservative artists' association and founded their own, with its own building, the golden-domed Secession House, inscribed 'To each age its art, to art its freedom'. Klimt's golden phase (The Kiss, the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer) is its best-known painting: flat ornament of gold, spirals and mosaic-like patterns around naturalistic faces and hands. Koloman Moser, Carl Moll and others worked across painting, graphics and design, and the Wiener Werkstätte grew from it. Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka began in its orbit before moving to Expressionism.

How to tell it apart: gold leaf and flat geometric ornament combined with realistic faces; Art Nouveau elsewhere is more curving and floral, Expressionism more raw.

173 works in the quiz. Play a round on Vienna Secession.

Artists

Gustav Klimt · Koloman Moser · Carl Moll · Emil Orlík

Best-known works

“The Kiss” — Gustav Klimt, 1907
“Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” — Gustav Klimt, 1907
“Judith I” — Gustav Klimt, 1901
“Danaë” — Gustav Klimt, 1907
“The Three Ages of Woman” — Gustav Klimt, 1905
“Beethoven Frieze” — Gustav Klimt, 1902
“Death and Life” — Gustav Klimt, 1910
“Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings” — Gustav Klimt, 1900
“Water Serpents II” — Gustav Klimt, 1904
“The Tree of Life” — Gustav Klimt, 1909
“Hope I” — Gustav Klimt, 1903
“Hope II” — Gustav Klimt, 1907
“Stoclet Frieze” — Gustav Klimt, 1900
“The Hydra” — Gustav Klimt, 1906
“Portrait of Emilie Flöge” — Gustav Klimt, 1902
“Schubert at the Piano II” — Gustav Klimt, 1899
“Fritza Riedler” — Gustav Klimt, 1906
“Goldfish” — Gustav Klimt, 1902
“Portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein” — Gustav Klimt, 1905
“Bauerngarten mit Sonnenblumen” — Gustav Klimt, 1906
“Sunflower” — Gustav Klimt, 1907
“Poppy Field (Mohnfeld)” — Gustav Klimt, 1907
“Dame mit Hut und Federboa” — Gustav Klimt, 1910
“Pear Tree” — Gustav Klimt, 1903
“Water Castle” — Gustav Klimt, 1908
“Rosebushes under the Trees” — Gustav Klimt, 1905
“Silverfishes (Nixen, Sirens)” — Gustav Klimt, 1899
“Cottage Garden” — Gustav Klimt, 1905
“Moving Water” — Gustav Klimt, 1898
“Serena Pulitzer Lederer (1867–1943)” — Gustav Klimt, 1899