Sezessionstil

Sezessionstil (German, “secession style”), term applied to work in the art nouveau idiom produced in Vienna in the last decade of the 19th century by members of an avant-garde group known as the Wiener Sezession. Chiefly involving architecture and the applied arts, Sezessionstil was significantly influenced by the geometric style of the Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Its main proponents were the Austrian architects Otto Wagner, Josef Hoffmann, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, who designed the building that housed the exhibitions of the Sezession (1898-99). A journal entitled Ver Sacrum (1898-1903) was associated with the movement.