Vienna: Art and Design

Graham Abbott begins by exploring an incredibly dynamic moment in history: Vienna, at the start of the twentieth-century. The revolutionary spirit of reform of the late 1800’s lead to great feats of urban planning, modern engineering and architecture.

The Postal Savings Bank of 1903 was the ultimate manifestation of Otto Wagner’s functional and aesthetic principles and one of Vienna’s most significant examples of early modern architecture.

The Vienna Secession was established in 1897 by a group of discontented young artists, designers and architects who set out to explore art unencumbered by the constraints of the academic system.

Here we discover the influence that many young avant-garde designers of the Secession had on Vienna’s wealthy bourgeoisie and the means by which individual identity, within Viennese culture, could find expression.

Here we explore the significance of human sexuality through the art of Gustav Klimt and one of Vienna’s most formidable thinkers of the time, the scientist and psychologist Sigmund Freud.

Here we explore the self-absorbed art of Egon Schiele. We look at why his drawings are considered the direct expression of his own mental and emotional states and what led to his arrest in 1912.

The Wiener Werkstätte – or ‘Vienna Workshop’ – was a craft workshop set up by members of the Secession. Here we look at the formation of this highly influential group of designers and one of their most ambitious endeavors, to design, build and fit out the Stoclet Palace.

Here we discover the story behind the best private collection of art and design ever to escape Nazi Austria.

The year 1918 marks the end of Vienna’s remarkable artistic and intellectual flowering and saw the death of Vienna’s four major artisits: Klimt, Wagner, Moser and Schiele.