Joseph Maria Olbrich

A distinctly Viennese school in painting begins to develop in the movement known as the Vienna Secession—referring to its breakaway in 1897 from the academic painters of the Künstlerhaus—which is part of the Jugendstil, as Art Nouveau is known in the German regions.

Led by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, thirty-six, the members are influenced by William Morris, Walter Crane, and Charles Voysey and also adopt the British aesthetic for their handcrafted products.

The Viennese movement tangentially involves a number of innovative Austrian architects, including Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Josef Hoffman.

The fifty-seven-year-old Wagner, as adviser to the Transport Commission in Vienna, is occupied from 1894 to 1898 with the construction of the Stadtbahn, the city's metropolitan railway network.

He designs bridges and tunnels for this system, as well as the stations, with their complex of platforms, staircases, and ticket offices.

Many of these stations, like Wagner's so-called Majolica House of the same year, use elements of art nouveau (or Jugendstil).

In the Majolica House, Wagner's decorative exploitation of the architectural surface with flexible, S-shaped linear ornament associates the Majolica House with the Sezessionstil, as do its decorative iron balconies and colored ceramic floral designs (the latter designed by Wagner's student Alois Ludwig).

Joseph Maria Olbrich is a member of Wagner's atelier in Vienna when he designs the group's Secession Building on the Karlsplatz, completed in 1898 in time for the second exhibition.

Its blocklike simplicity is relieved by the floral Art Nouveau decoration used on the metal cupola.

Adolf Loos announces his intention to avoid the use of unnecessary ornament in opposition to both Art Nouveau and Beaux-Arts historicism.

Educated in Dresden, Loos had spent the years 1893-97 in the United States and now practices in Vienna ta twenty-eight.

Joseph Maria Olbrich is invited in 1899 to join the artists' colony at Darmstadt established by Grand Duke Ernest Louis.

Otto Wagner continues to combine academic geometry with classical modified Art Nouveau decoration in his Karlsplatz Stadtbahn Station (1899­-1901).

The buildings above ground on Karlsplatz are a well-known example of Jugendstil architecture.

These buildings are included in the Vienna Secession, as they follow many of the artistic styles of that movement.

Designed by Wagner, adviser to the Transport Commission in Vienna, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, they are, unlike the other Stadtbahn stations, made of a steel framework with marble slabs mounted on the exterior.

These stations allow Wagner to achieve his goal of creating two modern axes of architecture in a city that is becoming one of the most modern cities of its time.

These buildings will go on to become the most modern monument of the modern city.