Fin de siècle – Secession and Jugendstil
Young artists broke away from the academies, and in Vienna, Munich and Berlin a new art emerged in which gold, ornament and emotion flowed together.
By around 1890 many young artists in the German-speaking countries had grown tired of the academies and the taste of the great exhibitions. In Munich they broke away and in 1892 formed a secession, a breakaway group. Vienna followed in 1897 and Berlin in 1898. In Vienna Gustav Klimt became leader of the new movement, and the association acquired its own exhibition building with a dome of gilded laurel leaves. Modern art from all over Europe was shown there, including work from Scandinavia. The movement quickly spread to other cities.
The new style was called Jugendstil after the Munich magazine Jugend, which began publication in 1896. In Austria people spoke of the Secession style. Undulating lines, plant forms and stylised female figures filled posters, furniture, jewellery and façades. The artists wanted to unite art and everyday life and turn everything from teacups to entire houses into works of art. In Darmstadt an artists’ colony was built on a hill, and in Vienna the Wiener Werkstätte was founded in 1903 to create beautiful objects for daily use. It was a style that wanted to be new in every respect.
At the same time a German Impressionist painting took shape in Berlin around Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt. Käthe Kollwitz depicted the misery of the working class in prints charged with strong social feeling. In the village of Worpswede near Bremen, Paula Modersohn-Becker painted simple, powerful pictures that pointed ahead to Expressionism. Edvard Munch and August Strindberg spent time in Berlin, and Nordic art gained considerable influence there. The turn of the century was a time of both refinement and unease about the new century.