The Fondation Beyeler exhibition in Basel brings together an unprecedented selection of masterworks of artists living and working in Vienna in 1900. Vienna was the boilng laboratoirum of scientific experiments, social unrest, ethnical diversification, artistic changes and innovations in architecture, painting, writing and theatre. The painters Gustave Klimt and Egon Schiele were the leading artistic lights in Vienna of the day. Portraits by the young Oskar Kokoschka, self-portraits by Richard Gerstl, and works by the composer-painter Arnold Schoenberg are among the exhibited workd. Architects, furniture designers, and artisans of the Viennese Secession and Workshops also show how their close collaboration gave rise to a new, interdisciplinary form of art: the gesamtkunstwerk. The exhibition will comprise approximately 200 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings, supplemented by architectural models, furniture, textile designs, glass and silver objects, artists posters, and photographs. These add up to a fascinating picture of Vienna around 1900.
