Vienna around 1900 - a fascinating period in which the metropolis on the Danube became an important center of modernity. Historicism, art nouveau and expressionism, were the defining styles, all of which resonated with a touch of typical Viennese morbidity. Artists such as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann were united in their dream of forging a Gesamtkunstwerk, in which not only art, architecture and crafts, but also art and life itself were combined.

Fin-de-siecle Vienna was home to some of the most extraordinary minds of modern times, and was a vigorous melting-pot of radical new ideas and concepts in every field. Comprising 25 essays on the key movements and figures of the era, this volume offers a portrait of this astonishing cultural ferment."

"At the start of the 20th century, more than fifty artists gathered in Vienna with varying ideas but a common determination: to be free of the bourgeois morality and its obsolete traditions. The Vienna Secession, founded in 1897, would shape a distinctive form of art in Vienna and all over the world. Gustav Klimt, Richard Strauss, Otto Wagner, Sigmund Freud, Egon Schiele, and others all sought ways to break with the classicism of the Austro-Hungarian Empire on its decline. In his atmosphere of artistic, intellectual, and political effervescence, a new world was born."--Sitio web del editor.

The new presentation of the Leopold Museum's collection highlights the splendour and wealth of artistic achievements of an era shaped by the emergence of the Secessionists, the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy and the deaths of eminent artists of Viennese Modernism, including Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser and Otto Wagner. Like the exhibition, the accompanying 560-page publication also aims to convey a sense of the character of this time and of the vibrant atmosphere in the metropolis of Vienna.Twelve scientific essays by renowned experts illustrate the historical aspects and biographies of the era's eminent protagonists whose fruitful synergy provided the basis for Vienna's unique cultural life around the turn of the century. A comprehensive appendix of illustrations shows the highlights of the Leopold Collection presented in the exhibition as well as important external loans.

Fin-de-sie`cle Vienna remains a central event in the birth of this century's modern culture. This text offers alternative ways of understanding the subject, through the concept of 'critical modernism' and the integration of previously neglected subjects.