27TH AUTUMN SALON

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This year’s Autumn Salon presents a broad and deliberately diverse range of art from around 1900, showcasing the influence this era exercised far beyond Vienna.

We are delighted that significant objects from our collection are shown at renowned museums, including the Landesgalerie Niederösterreich in Krems and the Jewish Museum in New York. These works include ceramics by female Wiener Werkstätte artists such as Luise Spannring, Vally Wieselthier, Susi Singer Schinnerl and Hedwig Schmidl, as well as dresses made from Wiener Werkstätte fabrics based on designs by Mathilde Flögl and Felice Rix, and a collection of bobbin laces designed by Fritzi-Löw-Lazar, Dagobert Peche and Anny Schröder and manufactured by Wiener Werkstätte.

A matter of special importance to me are the silver objects based on designs by Josef Maria Auchentaller and crafted by Georg Adam Scheid: an enamelled cigarette case, two small pill boxes and a holder for coloured pencils. These objects possess that special Viennese charm, that lovely gracefulness that lend this period around 1900 its unique appeal. Auchentaller, whose works stand out for their delicate, almost poetic ‘charm of things’, is in my view artistically akin to Koloman Moser.

I would also like to draw your attention to the drawings and designs by Bertold Löffler, including a sheet that clearly depicts the putto, whose ceramic version is shown at the gallery. This year’s Autumn Salon also features numerous paintings, including several landscapes by the French painter Louis Bourgeois-Borgex (1873–1959).

As an absolute highlight we are presenting a magnificent cabinet by Otto Prutscher, executed in 1912 by Karl Adolf Franz. This exquisite piece, made of rosewood, clearly ranks among Prutscher’s most significant furniture designs. Its elaborate marquetry, composed of some 17 different types of fruit- and precious woods, adds to the extraordinary elegance of this work of art.

The range of objects presented at this Salon is rounded off by a number of Werkstätte Hagenauer objects. Apart from these, the Salon is entirely dedicated to the period around 1900, as I consider it important to show that Viennese Modernism is much more than a few famous names. Alongside such prominent figures as Josef Hoffmann, this period has generated numerous male and female artists, who, thanks to their inventiveness, talent and skills, created works of outstanding quality and thus contributed to making this era a golden age of applied and fine arts. Playing an eminent role in the evolution of an ‘international style’, Vienna around 1900 and the design language it created were not only far ahead of their time, but also influenced French artists, Art Deco and even the Bauhaus.

Even today, the attraction of Viennese Modernism around 1900 has lost none of its energy. The spirit of this era and of Wiener Werkstätte as a key source of creativity, continues to inspire architecture, design and the applied arts throughout the world.

This year’s Autumn Salon once again evokes this era’s charisma, openness and elegance, celebrating its exuberant creativity.

I invite you to immerse yourself in this spirit and experience the effect of these exquisite works of art at our two galleries.

I invite you to immerse yourself in this spirit and enjoy the effect of these exquisite works of art at our two galleries.