Otto Wagner

These essays explore the parameters of Wagner's rich literary and architectural creations.

In 1896, Otto Wagner's "Modern Architecture" shocked the European architectural community with its impassioned plea for an end to eclecticism and for a "modern" style suited to contemporary needs and ideals, utilizing the nascent constructional technologies and materials. Through the combined forces of his polemical, pedagogical, and professional efforts, this determined, newly appointed professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts emerged in the late 1890s - along with such contemporaries as Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow and Louis Sullivan in Chicago - as one of the leaders of the revolution soon to be identified as the "Modern Movement." Wagner's historic manifesto is now presented in a new English translation - the first in almost ninety years - based on the expanded 1902 text and noting emendations made to the 1896, 1898, and 1914 editions. In his introduction, Dr. Harry Mallgrave examines Wagner's tract against the backdrop of nineteenth-century theory, critically exploring the affinities of Wagner's revolutionary élan with the German eclectic debate of the 1840s, the materialistic tendencies of the 1870s and 1880s, and the emerging cultural ideology of modernity. Modern Architecture is one of those rare works in the literature of architecture that not only proclaimed the dawning of a new era, but also perspicaciously and cogently shaped the issues and the course of its development; it defined less the personal aspirations of one individual and more the collective hopes and dreams of a generation facing the sanguine promise of a new century

By the time Viennese architect Otto Wagner (1841-1918) began publishing the drawings included in this colouring book, he had already spent a great deal of his career designing buildings in the historicist style. But his attitude was changing, and in time he wholly disregarded those early designs. The images here, presented roughly chronologically, show the shifts he made throughout his career. He published these drawings as part of Einige Skizzen, Projekte und ausgefu ̈hrte Bauwerk (Sketches, Projects and Executed Buildings), beginning in 1890 and ending with a posthumous fourth volume in 1922.Some one hundred years after Wagner's death, his mark can still be found throughout his hometown, in buildings that include the Church of St. Leopold (a.k.a. Kirche am Steinhof), the architect's two villas, and former railway buildings for the Stadtbahn. Drawings for those structures are among these images, but many of the others you will find here were never completed. Despite this, today Wagner is celebrated for his lasting contributions to the architectural spirit of Vienna.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Vienna Secession shook the worlds of art and design, breaking the rigid constraints of an esthetic dominated by slavish emulation of prior styles. Nowhere is this paradigm shift better exemplified than in the works of the two Austrian creators featured here. Architect Otto Wagner (1841-1918) famously rejected the eclectic imitation and combination of historical styles that had dominated European architecture, advocating instead constructions aware of modern materials, modern needs, and modern society. Painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) broke with an academic art style to develop an intensely personal style favoring fluid lines, bold colors, provocative imagery, and diverse media. Otto Wagner/Gustav Klimt, the third title in the Duets series, brings together the work of these two artists in order to present a rich comparative study. Essentially three volumes in one, a section on each artist presents a brief biography and an examination of some major works, with a third section that compares the images and ideas of the two artists. Art and architecture lovers will treasure this book for years to come.