04.09.2025 – 18.01.2026
At the end of the 19th century, many aspired to a new life close to nature. The Viennese Secessionists indulged in Wagner’s ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk. Modern theosophy, influenced by the Far East, found its way to the vegetarian regulars’ tables of Viennese intellectuals. Marie Lang, women’s rights activist and promoter of the social reform settlement movement, also came from a theosophical background; her son Erwin Lang captured the expressive dance of the Wiesenthal sisters in paintings. Spiritualism offered further niches for women: Gertrude Honzatko-Mediz created mediumistic drawings. In neighbouring countries, trance states were recorded by established painters such as Albert von Keller and Gabriel von Max. Richard Gerstl, Arnold Schönberg, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer understood their models as auratic apparitions. Modern psychology was synthesised with somnambulistic intuitions. The emergence of abstract painting would hardly have been conceivable without the influence of occultist literature. For the first time in Vienna, the search for the New Man will be thematised in a major survey exhibition without excluding dark aspects of magical thinking. In this sense, the Hidden Modernity project also makes a contribution to the critique of the present.
VERBORGENE MODERNE – Fascination of the occult around 1900
04.09.2025 – 18.01.2026
Leopold Museum
Museumquartier Wien
Museumplatz 1
1070 Vienna
www.leopoldmuseum.org
