Their official magazine was called Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring, in Latin), which published highly stylised and influential works of graphic art.

[2] The Vienna Secession was founded on 3 April 1897 by artist Gustav Klimt, designer Koloman Moser, architects Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich, Max Kurzweil, Wilhelm Bernatzik and others.

The goals of the new movement in Vienna were expressed by the literary critic Hermann Bahr in the first issue of the new journal begun by the group, called Ver Sacrum ("Sacred Spring").

[3] The established painter Rudolf von Alt, eighty-five years old, was chosen as the Honorary President of the group, and he led a delegation with an invitation to the Emperor Franz-Joseph to attend the first Exposition.

The architect was Joseph Maria Olbrich, a student of Otto Wagner; and his domed gallery building, with a sculptural frieze over the entrance, in the center of Vienna, became the symbol of the movement.

With the help of a network of art dealers such as Paul Cassirer, Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune and the support of the delegate of the Vienna Secession in Paris François-Rupert Carabin works by Bonnard, Degas, Denis, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Toulouse-Lautrec, Valloton, Vuillard etc.

This dispute came to a head in 1905 when Galerie Miethke's artistic consultant (and a painter himself),[8][9] Carl Moll, proposed that the Secession purchase the Gallery, as an outlet for its work.

[2] Along with painters and sculptors, several prominent architects were associated with the Vienna Secession, most notably Joseph Maria Olbrich, Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann.

In 1897–98 Olbrich designed the Secession Building to display the art of Klimt and the members of the group, and also by foreign artists, including Max Klinger, Eugène Grasset, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Arnold Böcklin.

During this period, Otto Wagner also built extraordinarily stylized stations for the new Vienna urban transport system, the Stadtbahn, which also became the symbols of the Secession style.

[14] Wagner's later buildings built after 1899, including the Church of St. Leopold (1902–1907) and especially the Austrian Postal Savings Bank (1903–1906, extended at 1910–12), had straight lines and geometric forms, a striking use of new materials, such reinforced concrete and aluminum, and a minimum of decoration on the facade or inside.

His best-known building, the Stoclet Palace in Brussels, had a tower of stacked cubic forms, minimum ornament on the facade, and an interior of right angles and geometric designs.

The furniture presented by the Secession at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition was particularly praised, and won international attention for its creators, including Else Unger and Emilio Zago.

[17] Later in the movement, in 1902, the architect Otto Wagner designed chairs using modern materials, including aluminum, combined with wood, to match the architecture of his Austrian Postal Savings Bank building.

Another notable figure in Secession glass art was Johann Loetz Witwe, who made a striking series of iridescent vases which won a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition.

Art Nouveau is called after Vienna Secession in languages of former Austro-Hungary: Hungarian: szecesszió, Czech: secese, Slovak: secesia, Polish: secesja, Serbian сецесија, Croatian secesija.

On the obverse side of the Austrian 50 euro-cent coin, the Vienna Secession Building figures within a circle, symbolising the birth of the movement and a new age in the country.