“Austrian Portraiture in the Early Twentieth Century” Exhibition

Neue Galerie

poster for “Austrian Portraiture in the Early Twentieth Century” Exhibition

This event has ended.

The genre of portraiture underwent dramatic changes at the turn of the twentieth century. With the invention of photography, artists shifted from purely representational likenesses in favor of portraits that captured the personality and essence of the sitter. This exhibition focuses on the portraiture of Gustav Klimt and his peers.

In Vienna, modern art was ushered in largely through the efforts of the Secession, an arts association founded in 1897. Prior to this time, Vienna’s art scene had been dominated by the conservative Künstlerhaus (Artists’ House). Similarly, the Akademie der bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) also favored a traditional approach. Students worked with copies of classical casts, and had to master line drawing before they could begin to work in color and paint in oil.

Klimt, the first president of the Secession, studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts), and his early work reflects the school’s academic approach. He created vividly realistic paintings in a historicist manner, becoming one of the most popular artists in Vienna. However, when the paintings Klimt created for the University of Vienna were rejected as too scandalous, he abandoned public projects in favor of portrait commissions and landscape paintings. Simultaneous with this shift, Klimt’s style became more decorative and informed by modern impulses.

On the heels of Klimt’s radical change, a new generation of Viennese artists—including Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, and Max Oppenheimer—broke from convention and adopted a style notable for the strong use of line, color, and gesture known as Expressionism. Schiele and other students from the Academy abandoned their studies to establish the Neukunstgruppe (New Art Group) in protest against the staunchly traditional methods of teaching. The often less than flattering portraits by Expressionist artists were deemed shocking at the time, but are now appreciated as some of the finest examples of modern art created in Vienna.

Media

Schedule

from October 09, 2014 to April 20, 2015

Artist(s)

Gustav Klimt et al.

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