Klimt, Schiele & Kokoschka:the Vienna Secession 1898 – 1918

Wed 1 September 2010

James Malpas

James Malpas MA, MPhil is a graduate in English Literature, History of Art and Renaissance Studies. He worked for the Tate, the V&A and the Royal Academy before joining Sotheby’s Education in 1986. He also contributes to BBC Radio programmes and writes for the Art Newspaper and The Observer. He is the author of Realism,  part of the Movements in Modern Art series published by Cambridge University Press.

By leaving the academic respectability of Vienna’s art establishment in 1898, Klimt and his young followers, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka, amongst others, initiated an efflorescence of art nouveau-based and post-impressionist vividness in colour few could have predicted. Eighty years on their work is amongst the most easily recognisable and popular of the century. The First World War doomed these developments, which now speak of the glories of a bygone age, opulent and sensitive at the same time.

Suggested Reading

Gustav Klimt: 1862-1918, by Rachel Barnes, Quercus Publishing, 2008

Klimt, by Catherine Dean, Phaidon Press, 1996