Vienna and Budapest 2018 Vienna and Budapest PU 2018

b e a u t y
and
the
abyss
v i e n n a
budapest
april 22 to 30, 2018
c e l e b r a t i n g
M O D ERNI S M
a travel program celebrating viennese modernism
and four of its most important protagonists
v
ienna and Budapest are among the half-dozen cities where the largest
quantity of Art Nouveau art and design can be found. And, more than in
most places, in each, there was originality and a fecund variety of forms.
Particularly striking is the sharp difference between the Austrian and
the Hungarian variants. In Vienna, ‘Secessionism’ developed in opposition to
artistic orthodoxy and social conservatism; in Budapest, ‘Eclecticism’ was all
this but additionally a manifestation of Magyr resentment of the cultural and
political dominance of their Austrian overlords.
Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century was a city in ferment – a bastion of
the established order, a hotbed of radical politics, a crucible of intellectual and
artistic revolution in art, architecture, design, music and thought. Lift not the
painted veil: behind it lay widespread discontent, a crumbling moral order and
myriad cracks in the coherence of empire. With remarkable suddenness, there
emerged from this complacent, decadent and artistically stagnant society a
brilliant array of artists and intellectuals who were determined to break with
the past and were prepared to risk affronting the establishment in doing so.
This was the city of Mahler, Schönberg, Schnitzler and Freud, and also of the
protagonists of this tour, Klimt, Schiele and Otto Wagner and their friends,
collaborators and rivals. The Great War brought Austrian suzerainty of Central
Europe crashing to an end, causing death, destruction and trauma along the
way. And then the ’flu pandemic of 1918 killed even more, including Schiele,
Klimt and Moser.
In 1918 four of the leading exponents of Modernism died: the artists Gustav
Klimt, Egon Schiele and Koloman Moser, and the architect and town planner
Otto Wagner.
One hundred years later, in 2018, Vienna celebrates this extraordinary cultural
period with a series of special exhibitions and events devoted to these pioneers
of Modernism and we would like to invite you to join us there!
Robert Aldana,
Director
IE A dventures & D onatello E vents
Gustav
Klimt
●
Egon
Schiele
●
Koloman
Moser
●
Otto
Wagner