The Vienna Secession was an association of artists, architects and designers founded in Vienna in 1897, when a group led by Gustav Klimt broke away from the conservative official artists' association to promote modern art and design. The name is also used for the distinctive style that grew out of the movement, Austria's counterpart to Art Nouveau.
Leading members included Klimt, Koloman Moser, Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich, who designed the Secession exhibition building with its gilded openwork dome. The movement promoted the idea of the total work of art, uniting architecture, painting, furniture, metalwork and textiles. Compared with French and Belgian Art Nouveau, Secession design tends towards geometry, with squares, grids, stylised plant forms and strong contrasts of black and white. Hoffmann and Moser went on to found the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903, producing furniture, silver, glass, jewellery and textiles of exceptional quality. Collectors seek pieces by known designers and makers, such as Thonet and Kohn bentwood furniture and Loetz glass from the period. Marks, documentation and condition are important, and the style's geometric clarity sits well in contemporary interiors.
