the artist who led the vienna secession movement was

The artists who would become part of the Wiener Werkstätte, which was founded in 1903, cut their artistic teeth in the Secession, founded in 1897, giving Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) and Kolomon Moser (1868-1918), an exhibition site to show their talents as graphic designers among “fine artists.” The Secession not only allowed but encouraged this erasure of the line between fine and applied arts, a pioneering move that would be followed by the French salons after the Great War. Those who would become the leaders of the Werkstätte formed the Club of Seven at the Café Sperl and a mid-career muralist for the Viennese government, Gustav Klimt, began to reconsider his role as an artist during these sessions with the Siebener Club. As was typical in Vienna, the dismayed and disaffected artists would gather in coffee houses to discuss their own ideas about art. The Kunstlerhaus Genessenschaft, the leading organization for exhibiting art had its own Ringstrasse building of Italian Renaissance design, which reflected the conservative viewpoint of those who determined which works of new art could be displayed. The Akademie de bildende Kunste, with classical inclinations and historicism on the mind, was the main purveyor of education and new artists.

Like the Viennese Secession, the Wiener Werkstätte emerged as an independent body of artisans out of the prevailing concern among a young generation of artists about the stagnation of culture in Vienna.

The artist who led the vienna secession movement was