Klimt, Schiele & Art Nouveau

Around 1900, Vienna became the epicenter of an artistic revolution. The Vienna Secession (founded in 1897) broke away from the academic art establishment — their motto: "To every age its art, to art its freedom", engraved in gold above the entrance of the Secession building.

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was the leader. His "The Kiss" (1907/08) — the gold-shimmering couple in an embrace — is one of the most iconic paintings in art history and hangs in the Upper Belvedere in Vienna. Klimt's "Golden Phase" (Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, sold for $135 million in 2006 — then the most expensive painting in the world) combines Byzantine splendor with erotic tension. His Beethoven Frieze in the Secession is a monumental liaison between art and music.

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was Klimt's pupil and radical counterpoint: Where Klimt used gold and ornament, Schiele painted naked bodies in contorted poses, thin, vulnerable, brutally honest. His nude drawings shocked society — he was even briefly imprisoned. The Leopold Museum in the MuseumsQuartier houses the world's largest Schiele collection.

Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) completed the triumvirate: expressive, wild, psychological — his portraits virtually "skinned" the subjects. Together, Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka make Vienna the most important place for turn-of-the-century art worldwide.

The Viennese Art Nouveau (Secession style) also influenced architecture: Otto Wagner's city railway pavilions at Karlsplatz and Nussdorfer Straße, his Postsparkasse building (a precursor of modernism), Josef Hoffmann's Purkersdorf Sanatorium, and the Wiener Werkstätte (craftsmanship at its highest level) — all can be experienced in Vienna.