Vienna Secession - the history of the art movement, Klimt, the Beethoven Frieze, and characteristics

The Vienna Secession was the artistic movement that made Vienna Europe’s most hotly debated art city between 1897 and 1905. On 3 April 1897, a group of artists left the conservative artists’ association Künstlerhaus and formed the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs - Secession, with Gustav Klimt as the association’s first chairman. The name was borrowed from ancient Rome, where secessio plebis referred to the plebeians’ withdrawal from the city in protest against the patricians’ abuse of power. The artists in Vienna believed that their withdrawal was of the same kind: an organized departure from an institution that had lost the right to decide what art could be.

Over eight intense years, the Secessionists built their own exhibition hall, published one of the era’s most beautiful magazines, and organized twenty-three exhibitions that brought Vienna into direct contact with European modernism. The movement is inseparable from the breakthrough of Art Nouveau in Central Europe, but differs from French and Belgian Art Nouveau through its attraction to geometric austerity, the square as a basic form, and a shimmering, symbol-laden visual world of gold. For anyone seeking posters and paintings today with clear lines, decorative surfaces, and a touch of mystery, the Secession’s visual language remains one of the most useful sources.

Contents
↓ What is the Vienna Secession?
↓ Vienna at the turn of the century and the break with the Künstlerhaus
↓ The Secession Building and the magazine Ver Sacrum
↓ Key works and legendary exhibitions
↓ Style, technique, and characteristics
↓ The artists in and around the Secession
↓ The split in 1905 and the lasting legacy
↓ Where can the Secession’s works be found today?
↓ The Vienna Secession at home
↓ Timeline
↓ Related movements and artists
↓ Frequently asked questions about the Vienna Secession

What is the Vienna Secession?

The Vienna Secession was both an artists’ association and an artistic style. The association was founded in Vienna on 3 April 1897 by nineteen artists, architects, and designers who wanted to break with the academic arbiters of taste. The founders included the painter Gustav Klimt, the graphic artist and designer Koloman Moser, and the architects Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich. The style is called Sezessionsstil in German and is considered the Austrian branch of Art Nouveau, but it quickly developed a character of its own: more austere, more geometric, and more influenced by English and Scottish design than by French flowing lines.

What distinguished the Secession from earlier artists’ revolts was its ambition to control the entire process. The association owned its own exhibition hall, published its own magazine, designed its own posters and catalogues, and had architects, painters, and applied artists work on the same projects. The goal was formulated as Gesamtkunstwerk - the total work of art, in which building, furniture, textiles, graphics, and painting obey the same formal vision. This idea would later be inherited by the Wiener Werkstätte and, indirectly, by Bauhaus.

Quick facts: Founded on April 3, 1897, in Vienna by nineteen artists · Official name Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs – Secession · First chairman Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) · Exhibition building designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich, inaugurated in 1898 · The dome consists of 2,500 gilded laurel leaves and 311 berries · Motto by the critic Ludwig Hevesi: “Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit.” · The journal Ver Sacrum was published from 1898–1903 · Twenty-three exhibitions were held up to 1905 · The Klimt group left the association on June 14, 1905 · The Beethoven Frieze (1902) measures approximately 34 meters in length.

Vienna at the turn of the century and the break with the Künstlerhaus

At the end of the 1890s, Vienna was the capital of a dual monarchy with more than fifty million inhabitants, and the city was undergoing a cultural intensification without parallel. Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899, Gustav Mahler took over as director of the Court Opera in 1897, Arnold Schoenberg began dismantling tonality, and the architect Adolf Loos was preparing his attack on ornament. In that environment, the Künstlerhaus - the only artists’ association with access to large exhibition spaces - appeared as a brake on progress. The association prioritized marketable genre paintings and history painting, and young artists were rarely given space.

The café where the movement was born

According to the established account, nineteen artists met at a Viennese café in the spring of 1897 and decided to leave the Künstlerhaus. The withdrawal was formalized on April 3 that same year. Klimt, who was already an established decorative painter with state commissions at the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, had the most to lose and was therefore elected chairman. His name gave the new association legitimacy at the very moment it declared war on the establishment.

The program: internationalism and equal status for the applied arts

The Secession’s program rested on three points. First, Vienna would see contemporary European art in the original rather than in reproduction. Second, applied arts, graphic art, and architecture would be exhibited on equal terms with painting and sculpture - a radical idea in a culture where oil painting stood highest. Third, the exhibitions themselves would be designed as works of art, with specially built rooms for each show. None of these points was unique in itself, but together they made the Secession Europe’s most consistent exhibition machine in the years around 1900.

The Secession Building and the magazine Ver Sacrum

Without its own building, the movement would have remained a protest statement. Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867–1908), a student of Otto Wagner, designed the building on Friedrichstraße, and it was completed in 1898 – just one year after the founding. The result is one of modernism's earliest manifesto buildings: a white-plastered, almost block-like structure with smooth wall surfaces, sparse ornamentation, and a considered asymmetry in the entrance section.

The Golden Dome and the Motto

Above the entrance is an openwork dome of gilded laurel leaves, quickly dubbed “the golden cabbage” by the Viennese. During the major façade renovation, which began in December 2017 and was completed in mid-May 2018, all 2,500 leaves and 311 berries were removed, restored by hand, and gilded again. Beneath the dome is the motto formulated by the critic Ludwig Hevesi: “Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit.” To the left of the doorway is the other motto, Ver Sacrum – sacred spring. The building still serves as an exhibition hall for contemporary art and is run by the artists' association itself; it can be visited via the Secession's official website.

“Der Zeit ihre Kunst. Der Kunst ihre Freiheit.” – To every age its art. To art its freedom. Motto by Ludwig Hevesi, inscribed in gold above the entrance to the Secession Building in Vienna.

Ver Sacrum – the magazine that became a school of graphic design

The magazine Ver Sacrum was founded by Gustav Klimt and Max Kurzweil and published between 1898 and 1903. It was unusual in its format alone: square, deliberately defying the upright rectangles of the book market, and designed with great care given to margins, vignettes, and typefaces. Each issue was a designed object rather than a container for text. For posterity, Ver Sacrum is the best key to how the Secessionists thought about the surface – and it explains why so much of the movement's visual language translates naturally into graphic posters today.

Key works and legendary exhibitions

Between 1897 and 1905, the association organized twenty-three exhibitions. The rapid pace – in practice, three to four shows a year – meant that Vienna had the chance to see Auguste Rodin, Max Klinger, the Scottish Glasgow School centered around Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Japanese arts and crafts, and French graphic art in a short period. Two exhibitions have achieved iconic status.

The Fourteenth Exhibition, 1902 – The Beethoven Exhibition

Between April 15 and June 27, 1902, the entire exhibition building was transformed into a space centered around Max Klinger’s Beethoven sculpture. Around forty artists contributed murals, reliefs and interior furnishings, and Gustav Mahler conducted an arrangement of the finale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the opening. The exhibition was the purest application of the Gesamtkunstwerk concept achieved by the Secession.

The Beethoven Frieze - 34 Meters of Painting

Klimt’s contribution to the Beethoven Exhibition was a frieze approximately 34 meters long and just over two meters high, painted in casein paint on lightweight plaster, with elements of gold leaf, mirrored glass, semiprecious stones and curtain rings. The visual narrative follows the conclusion of the Ninth Symphony: humanity’s longing for happiness, the armored knight who encounters the hostile forces - the giant Typhoeus and the Gorgons - and finally the kiss that unites art and humanity. The work was intended to be dismantled when the exhibition closed, but because a Klimt retrospective had already been scheduled for the following year, it was left in place. Today, the frieze is owned by the Belvedere and is displayed as a permanent loan in the basement of the Secession Building.

The Faculty Paintings and the Scandal

At the same time, Klimt was working on three ceiling paintings for the University of Vienna - Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence. Eighty-seven professors signed a protest against them, and the artist ultimately repaid the advance and reclaimed the works. The paintings were destroyed in a fire at Immendorf Castle in 1945 and are known only through black-and-white photographs and preparatory studies. The scandal marked the turning point at which Klimt abandoned public commissions in favor of portraits, landscapes and the shimmering golden allegories that bear his name today.

Style, Technique and Characteristics

Those who want to recognize a Secession work can look for four characteristics: the precedence of surface over depth, the square and the grid as organizing principles, ornament as a bearer of meaning rather than decoration, and a striking awareness of the frame and format. Together, these distinguish Austrian Jugendstil from the French variant, which is described in more detail on the page about Art Nouveau and Jugendstil.

The Square and the Grid

Josef Hoffmann was nicknamed Quadratl-Hoffmann - roughly “Square Hoffmann” - for his almost obsessive use of the grid pattern. Black-and-white grids recur in his metalwork, in the façade divisions of Palais Stoclet, and in the margins of Secession graphics. Where French Art Nouveau seeks the asymmetrical curve, Vienna seeks the repeated square. It is precisely this geometric austerity that makes Secession graphics age exceptionally well and coexist effortlessly with abstract posters from later eras.

Gold and the Byzantine Surface

Klimt’s Golden Period, roughly 1901–1909, is usually traced to two travel impressions: the mosaics in San Vitale in Ravenna, which he saw in 1903, and his father’s profession as a gold engraver. Gold was not used to create the illusion of space but to abolish it. The figures’ faces and hands are painted naturalistically, while clothing and backgrounds dissolve into ornament, creating the characteristic tension between living skin and a flat, decorated surface.

Symbolic Intensity and Eroticism

The Secession’s imagery is steeped in symbolism: allegories of life and death, woman as both threat and promise, and the unconscious as a visual motif. Its affinity with European Symbolism is direct, and Vienna added a psychoanalytic dimension that is scarcely conceivable without Freud’s simultaneous work in the same city.

The Artists in and Around the Secession

The Secession was never a unified school but an alliance between strong individuals. Klimt was its figurehead, but the movement’s breadth is explained by the fact that designers and architects wielded as much influence as the painters.

Klimt, Moser, and Hoffmann

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) is the best-known of the Secessionists and is discussed in detail on the page about Gustav Klimt. Koloman Moser (1868–1918) was the movement’s most skilled graphic artist and designed posters, stained-glass windows, and furniture. Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) brought the Secession’s formal language into architecture and, with the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, built between 1905–1911, created the most complete example of a total work of art, with Klimt also contributing the dining-room frieze.

Otto Wagner and the Next Generation

The architect Otto Wagner (1841–1918) joined the association in 1899 but was not a founder. His Postsparkasse in Vienna, completed in 1906, translated the Secession’s aesthetic into a building of aluminum rivets and glass. The generation that followed - Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka - drew their technical confidence from Klimt and Moser but turned decoration into nervous line and raw psychology. The transition from the Secession to Viennese Expressionism took place around 1909 and is one of modernism’s fastest shifts in style.

The Secession Split in 1905 and Its Long Legacy

In 1903, Hoffmann and Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte production workshop, financed by textile industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer. The workshop produced silver, glass, textiles, bookbindings, jewelry, and furniture according to Secession principles and became a direct model for later design cooperatives. Its success, however, sharpened a latent conflict within the association between those who wanted to maintain painting as the principal art and those who wanted arts and crafts and commercial production to carry equal weight.

On June 14, 1905, the Klimt group - Klimt, Moser, Hoffmann, Carl Moll, and around twenty others - left the Secession after a dispute that ostensibly concerned the purchase of a gallery but was fundamentally about artistic outlook. The association continued to exist and still does today, but the period that gives the movement its place in art history ends there. Its legacy lives on at several levels: in the Wiener Werkstätte, in the geometric drive toward form that reached interwar design through Hoffmann's students, and in the graphic tradition connecting Secession posters with later Arts and Crafts-inspired design.

The market has strongly confirmed its valuation. Klimt's last completed portrait, Dame mit Fächer from 1917–1918, was sold at Sotheby's in London on June 27, 2023, for £85.3 million, equivalent to approximately $108.4 million - at the time, the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction in Europe. On November 18, 2025, a Klimt portrait of Elisabeth Lederer from Leonard Lauder's collection broke that record with $236.4 million at Sotheby's in New York.

Vienna Secession in the home

The Secession style is unusually well suited to a home, for two reasons. The first is that the works were conceived as part of an interior from the outset - Hoffmann and Moser designed rooms, not just pictures. The second is that the style combines two qualities that rarely coexist otherwise: decorative richness and strict geometry. A Secession motif can therefore carry an otherwise sparsely furnished room without making it feel cluttered.

Gold, ochre, and deep green

The most widely used palette in Secession painting ranges from gold leaf, ochre, terracotta, olive green, and black. It works best against warm, muted wall colors - off-white, light clay, muted sage green - and less well against chalk white, which makes the gold tones look gray. A single Klimt motif in a larger format works as the room's focal point; two or three smaller Secession graphics are better displayed as a group. You may want to read the guide on choosing the right art for your home before deciding on the format.

Frame and hanging

The Secessionists devoted as much care to the frame as to the image - Klimt's brother Georg was a metal artist and made several of the frames. A narrow frame in black, oak, or brass is close to the character of the originals, while wide Baroque-style gold frames counteract the style's austerity. Square formats have a particular historical logic here, since Ver Sacrum and several of Klimt's landscapes used the square. Our guide to framing art and our selection of frames provide concrete dimensions to work from.

Tip: Hang a gold-toned Secessionist motif on a wall that receives evening light from a warm-toned lamp rather than direct daylight. The sheen of gold leaf in the originals is based on reflection, and a warm light source at 2,700 kelvin reproduces that effect considerably better in a printed reproduction than cool daylight, which shifts the color toward green. Position the motif so that the eye meets it at approximately 145 centimeters above the floor.

Combine with other eras

Secession's grid makes it unusually easy to combine. It works well with Scandinavian 20th-century design, Japanese woodcuts - the Secessionists collected them themselves - and geometric abstraction from the 1920s. Avoid combining it with heavy Baroque graphics, however, as they compete for the same decorative attention. Ideas for creating a cohesive grouping can be found in the guide to gallery walls and the article on decorating with posters.

Where can Secession works be found today?

Unlike many art movements, Secession's output is unusually concentrated geographically. Most of the major works remain in Vienna, within walking distance of one another, making the city the only place where the movement can be studied in its entirety. Its spread to the rest of the world did not occur until the second half of the 20th century, largely as a result of restitution processes following the confiscations of World War II.

The Four Houses in Vienna

Belvedere owns The Kiss from 1907–1908, the work that attracts the most visitors of all Austrian artworks, as well as the Beethoven Frieze, which is housed on deposit in the Secession Building. The Leopold Museum in the MuseumsQuartier houses the world's most comprehensive Schiele collection - around 300 works, including some forty paintings - within a total collection of more than 8,300 objects. The Museum für angewandte Kunst manages the Wiener Werkstätte archive and Klimt's full-scale preparatory cartoons for the Stoclet Frieze. The Secession Building itself still functions as an exhibition hall and is run by the artists' association, making it one of Europe's oldest still-active artist-run institutions. An overview of the collection is available at Leopold Museum.

Works That Left Austria

Today, a number of key works are located outside Vienna. The 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, often called the Austrian Mona Lisa, was returned to the Altmann family in 2006 after a lengthy restitution process and acquired that same year by the Neue Galerie in New York for $135 million – at the time the world’s most expensive painting. The Stoclet Frieze remains in Palais Stoclet in Brussels, which is privately owned and closed to the public but has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009. This dispersion explains why reproductions have been so important to the Secession’s reach: for most viewers, it is in printed form that they actually encounter the works.

Timeline

1862 – Gustav Klimt is born in Baumgarten outside Vienna, the son of gold engraver Ernst Klimt. 1873 – The Vienna World’s Fair turns the city into a European cultural center and the Künstlerhaus into its artistic organizer. 3 April 1897 – The Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs – Secession is founded by nineteen artists; Klimt is elected chairman. 1898 – The first Secession exhibition opens, the magazine Ver Sacrum publishes its first issue, and Olbrich’s exhibition building is completed. 1900 – The Faculty Painting Philosophy is exhibited and triggers protests from eighty-seven professors at the University of Vienna.

15 April–27 June 1902 – The fourteenth exhibition, the Beethoven Exhibition, opens with Klimt’s 34-metre-long Beethoven Frieze and music conducted by Gustav Mahler. 1903 – The Wiener Werkstätte is founded by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, with Fritz Waerndorfer as financier; Klimt travels to Ravenna and sees the Byzantine mosaics. 1905 – The Klimt Group leaves the Secession on 14 June; the same year, Palais Stoclet is begun in Brussels. 1907–1908 – The Kiss is painted and purchased by the Austrian state before it is fully completed. 1918 – Klimt, Moser, Schiele, and Otto Wagner all die this year, bringing the Viennese turn-of-the-century era to an end.

1945 – The Faculty Paintings are destroyed in the fire at Immendorf Castle. 1986 – The Beethoven Frieze is made permanently accessible to the public in the basement of the Secession Building after extensive conservation. May 2018 – Renovation of the Secession Building’s façade is completed after all 2,500 laurel leaves and 311 berries are regilded. June 2023 – Dame mit Fächer is sold for £85.3 million in London. November 2025 – Klimt’s portrait of Elisabeth Lederer is sold for $236.4 million in New York.

Related movements and artists

The Vienna Secession stood within a close network of contemporary movements. The French and Belgian branches are covered on the page about Art Nouveau and Jugendstil, while the British prehistory, with the revival of craftsmanship, is described under Arts and Crafts. The dreamlike logic of its imagery is shared with Symbolism, and its geometric discipline points forward to Bauhaus. Among individual artists, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele are the obvious starting points.

In the Nordic countries, the turn-of-the-century interest in form found its own expression. Prince Eugen commissioned the architect Ferdinand Boberg to design Waldemarsudde in 1903–1905, with a gallery building added in 1913, and the collection now comprises around 7,000 works; the museum is presented by Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde. Ateneum in Helsinki presented the exhibition Gallen-Kallela, Klimt & Vienna from September 26, 2025, to February 1, 2026, thereby mapping the direct contact between Vienna and Nordic turn-of-the-century art. An in-depth look at the Nordic parallel can be found under National Romanticism. More fact pages about artists and movements are collected in the Knowledge Base.

Frequently asked questions about the Vienna Secession

Bring Vienna into your own room

The Vienna Secession was fundamentally an attempt to bring art into everyday life - into books, furniture, buildings, and rooms. Hanging a Secession-style motif is therefore an unusually faithful application of the movement's own idea. Explore motifs by Klimt and his contemporaries among our famous artists, compare them with older paintings in classical art, and delve into the movement's history in the reference article about the Vienna Secession.