Among the highlights of this exhibition are paintings and drawings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Carl Moll as well as some masterpieces of the Arts and Crafts movement by Josef Hoffmann, Kolo Moser, Michael Powolny and the Wiener Werkstätten.
1900, Landesmuseum Joanneum On the other hand, important works of photography and model sculptures underline the exhibitions claim to allow, by grouping the most diverse artifacts, an emotional insight into the awareness of life at this particular time.
By focussing on Styria, presenting a lively image of this period posed a major challenge. The exhibits stem from collections of the Landesmuseum Joanneum and from private owners. Styrian artists, such as Marie Egner, Alfred Zoff or Wilhelm Thöny, impressively prove that by variation and transformation, excellent works were created even outside Vienna, and can be considered as masterpieces in their own right.
Thus this exhibition offers a sensitive and exciting journey through the prime of Austrian creation. After many years of historism, with its imitated styles, the artists of this period intended once again to create a universal formal language. They developed the so-called Art Nouveau as an answer to the bourgeois self-awareness of the time. The artists in their imaginative language responded to industrial mass production and celebrated craftsmanship as a foundation of Art and Arts & Craft. In the true spirit of the time, art and craftsmanship melted into one. The feeling to live in the midsummer of art cannot only be explained by the special quality of artistic production but also by the wish for ornamental decoration transfusing into everyday life.
