Leopold Museum presents select works by the main exponents of Viennese Jugendstil

Vienna is marking 100 years since the death of a string of luminaries from its fin-de-siecle glory days with an avalanche of exhibitions of modernist art, design and architecture that still inspire and shock today. The year 1918 did not only mark defeat in World War I and the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire but also saw artists Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Koloman Moser and architect Otto Wagner pass away. Klimt died from a stroke at 55, an infection claimed Wagner’s life at 76 and cancer killed Moser aged 50. Schiele survived being conscripted into the war only to die in the Spanish flu pandemic, three days after his pregnant wife Edith. He was just 28. All were leading lights in the revolutions in art, literature, architecture, psychology, philosophy and music that made the imperial city on the Danube the buzzing intellectual hub of the world at the time.