From Klimt to Schiele: Turn-of-century Vienna in spotlight in Seoul

By Park Han-sol

Vienna at the dawn of the 20th century was a city like no other — a bubbling cauldron of creative energies, constantly percolating and colliding with one another. “There’s no modernism like Viennese modernism,” art critic Roberta Smith once noted in a New York Times review.

The city, standing at the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was in the throes of a sweeping transition in the decades leading up to World War I (1914-18). As a melting pot of intellectuals and creatives, it became a stage where an explosion of new ideas clashed with the old across disciplines, from art and music to psychology.

Architects like Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos designed buildings that rejected out-of-touch historicism and championed functionality. Sigmund Freud’s theory of the unconscious mind sparked a revolution in understanding human thought. In music, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg paved the way for a radical shift toward atonality.

And then there were the artists. Gustav Klimt and his protégé Egon Schiele captured the era’s dynamic contradictions on canvas. Klimt’s opulently stylized paintings extolled beauty and sensuality, while Schiele’s contorted portraits expressively laid bare the turmoil of the human spirit. Together, the two reflected the dualities of their time: vitality and unease.

These genre-spanning cultural feats from turn-of-the-century Vienna are the focus of the National Museum of Korea’s (NMK) new exhibition, “Vienna 1900: The Dreaming Artists — From Gustav Klimt to Egon Schiele.”

As its title suggests, the show is bookended by paintings of Klimt and Schiele. Yet, between these two icons lies a kaleidoscopic array of drawings, posters, photographs, sculptures, ceramics, handicrafts and furniture — testaments to the city’s multidisciplinary creative evolution.

All 191 pieces are on loan from Austria’s Leopold Museum, home to one of the most significant troves of Vienna’s early modernist treasures, including the world’s largest Egon Schiele collection.

“This show goes far beyond simply displaying artworks. It serves as a crucial platform for deepening the knowledge of the time when Vienna was the cultural capital of Europe,” Hans-Peter Wipplinger, director of the Leopold Museum, said during a recent press preview.

“I’m convinced that this show gives our audience a really good impression of the spirit of Vienna 1900.”

The show fittingly opens with Klimt, spotlighting his early forays into historicism and his role in founding the Vienna Secession with like-minded colleagues in 1897.

In a bold departure from conservatism, this groundbreaking movement advocated the ideal of “Gesamtkunstwerk,” or a total or universal work of art, where fine and applied arts come together seamlessly to elevate everyday life with transformative beauty.

Though Klimt parted ways with the group several years later, the Vienna Secession — as gleaned from works on view like his “The Large Poplar II (Gathering Storm)” (1902/3), Koloman Moser’s “Venus in the Grotto” (1914), Loos’ bentwood chair designed for the Café Museum (1898) and a series of group exhibition posters — forever redefined the paradigm of what modernist artmaking can be.

The movement’s emphasis on “art in everyday life” extended to the belief that practical craft objects deserve the same aesthetic status as fine art. This vision drove members Moser and Josef Hoffmann to establish the Vienna Workshop, which is highlighted in a dedicated section in the NMK exhibition. Here, visitors can explore a display of crystal glasses, vases, teacups, handbags, tableware and furniture.

Initial designs from the workshop reflected the influence of nature, featuring the sinuous curves characteristic of Art Nouveau, Europe’s popular decorative arts movement at the time. But it soon shifted toward a balance of functionality and beauty by embracing geometric simplicity.

The Vienna Workshop’s philosophy left an enduring mark on generations of designers and architects, including the future pioneers of the Bauhaus, who carried its ideals into functionalism.

In 1907, Klimt met Schiele — a fateful encounter that altered the creative trajectory of the young painter, who had grown disillusioned with the conservative teachings of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.

Schiele, known as a trailblazer of Austrian Expressionism alongside Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer, commands the spotlight in the latter section of “Vienna 1900: The Dreaming Artists.”

The exhibition brings together 46 paintings and drawings by the short-lived genius, marking the first comprehensive presentation of his work in Korea and the largest ever shown across Asia.

His iconic self-portraits, nudes and distorted landscapes — inhabited by raw, skeletal figures and unapologetic sexuality — are imbued with a profound longing for soul-searching, set against a backdrop of existential dread and the haunting solitude of the soul.

“Vienna 1900: The Dreaming Artists” runs through March 3, 2025, at the NMK.