My Favorite Artworks at Secession Building, Vienna

The Secession Building in Vienna is so iconic, that though it doesn't have permanent collections, except for Beethoven Frieze by Gustav Klimt, I feel that I am compelled to include it in the series of My Favorite Museum Collections.

Secession Building is an exhibition hall built in 1897 by Joseph Maria Olbrich as an architectural manifesto for the Vienna Secession and the Beethoven Frieze is a painting by Gustav Klimt created in 1902 for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition and is now on display in the building permanently.

The frieze has the hallmark of the overt ornamentation the movement, and it also addressed the life's motifs close to Klimt's heart, as it covered the themes of human yearning for happiness and fulfillment of desires in the dark and tempestuous world as can be gleaned through a snapshot of the copy of part of the immense frieze below.


Beethoven Frieze copy, Secession, Wien

The frieze has the hallmark of the overt ornamentation the movement, and it also addressed the life's motifs close to Klimt's heart, as it covered the themes of human yearning for happiness and fulfillment of desires in the dark and tempestuous world.

Since there are no other permanent art collections to speak of in Secession Building, I'm going to cheap a bit, by citing an element of the utterly lovely building itself.  My favorite relief on the exterior wall of the building is a group of three highly decorative owls, well-balanced and proportioned, stylized in the typical Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) fashion.  Absolutely enchanting.


Jugendstil owls - Detail of the facade of the Secession Building.
Image credit: Alberto Fernandez Fernandez

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 84: My Favorite Artworks in Votivkirche, Vienna
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 82: My Favorite Paintings at Leopold Museum, Vienna 

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited


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