What I learned from chapter 12, is that there was a movement called the Vienna Secession. The Vienna Secession was a movement that was against a rule that foreign artists that couldn’t enter the Kuntslerhaus exhibition. However, It was also a countermovement to art nouveau.

The Vienna Secession, which started in Austria of 1897, was a movement that moved away from the illustrative style that was part of the art nouveau movement. The movement was lead by painter, Gustav Kilmt. Notable artists who joined the movement were Joseph Maria Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann, and Koloman Moser. The style of the Vienna secession was clean and simple. They used thick san-serif fonts. They weren’t into floral designs as they evolved so they discontinued that style in their work.

Var Sacrum was a magazine during the movement. Many artists and designers that were working there were experimenting different styles of design. They tried to use unity within their designs. Text and illustration were being experimented to create compelling compositions. The Var Sacrum designers used decorative, ornaments, hand-drawn lettering, and linear art. The magazine had a layout that consisted of a lot of white space. There was also use of a grid and alignment with text. It became important to Vienna’s style as it evolved.

Designers of the Vienna Secession, over time, specialized in architecture, crafts, graphic design, interior design, painting, printmaking, and sculpting. Vienna workshops were created by Moser and Hoffmann. The workshops were an alternative to designs of different media that wasn’t at it’s best. Their business employed crafters such as carpenters, and leather makers. They were able to work with designers in order to improve the work. The Vienna workshops weren’t around for a very long time. During the Great Depression Era, business started to decline and the Vienna workshops couldn’t continue much longer. The difficulty of keeping up with finances is what forced them out of business.

The Vienna Secession movement countered the art nouveau movement with different experimentations of designs. Many designers used white space, hand drawn lettering, and linear art which evolved into the Vienna style. They combined geometric shapes, text and illustration to create designs that could work.