Vienna, Leopold Museum: A guided tour through art and the occult

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From Diefenbach's artist commune and mediumistic drawings to theosophical images of the astral body. Around 1900, artists sought new paths and new forms of expression, creating new human beings.

Highlights

Discover the secret desires of modern artists around 1900.
What do life reform then and now have in common?
What role did female media play in the art world of occult modernism?
What does Kandinsky's abstraction have to do with Schönberg's musical visions?

Description

The Leopold Museum's major fall exhibition brings together over 180 works by 72 artists, offering insights into the hidden realms of modernism. Many artists turned to spiritualism, occultism, alchemy, theosophy, or, subsequently, anthroposophy. Their goal was to explore the mysterious, connect with the supernatural, or find new meaning in life. Occult practices took place mainly in groups. Séances were held to summon spirits and attempt to communicate with the dead. Alchemical experiments were conducted to test new chemical reactions, which were then hotly debated. In artists' colonies, the first 'artist hippies' such as Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach preached a life outside bourgeois urban society. The representatives of the life reform movement indulged in a paradisiacal existence in the great outdoors and gave new meaning to the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill!' through their vegetarian diet. The exhibition brings together important artists (and two female artists) of European modernism who were particularly interested in the latest (para)scientific discoveries such as X-rays and magnetism. They saw themselves as both artists and seekers at the forefront of art and society, because they formed the avant-garde in terms of form and content. Exhibited artists: Gustinus Ambrosi, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Gusto Gräser, Fidus, Erich Mallina, Albert von Keller, Edvard Munch, August Strindberg, Arnold Schönberg, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, Frantisek Kupka, Wassily Kandinsky, Johannes Itten, Koloman Moser, Otto Barth, Franz Čižek, Erika Giovanna Klien, Ferdinand Hodler.