From Moderate to Radical Modernism: The Leopold Museum Shows a Comprehensive Hagenbund Exhibition

19.09.2022

Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger: “Cultural Testimony and Emphatic Reflection of Turbulent Times”

The Leopold Museum starts into the autumn exhibition season by dedicating a comprehensive presentation to the Hagenbund, featuring more than 180 objects, including 96 paintings. Three years after the founding of the Vienna Secession, the formation of the artists’ union Hagen provided another counter movement to the conservative Künstlerhaus in 1900. Criticism of the lack of support for young talents and the inflexibility of the cliques within the Künstlerhaus culminated in the collective secession of 22 “Hagenbund artists”. The Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger calls “the changeful history of the Hagenbund – which traced the evolution from the Monarchy to the proclamation of the First Austrian Republic, and from the brief spell of the Austrofascist corporate state to the seizure of power by the National Socialists – a cultural testimony and thus as an emphatic reflection of these turbulent times”.

“This exhibition dedicated to the Hagenbund is not aimed at affording an encyclopedic overview of the association’s history, spanning nearly 40 years, and of all its full and associate members, but rather at assembling a specific selection of the outstanding Austrian positions which mark the group’s artistic highlights. The chronological structure of the presentation allows us to illustrate the stylistic transformations over the four decades of the association’s existence as well as to reflect on the historical and social events which shaped the inhomogeneous throng of artists made up of ‘exponents of all camps’.”

Hans-Peter Wipplinger, co-curator of the exhibition

 

The Foundation of the Hagenbund

The Hagenbund derived its name from the innkeeper Josef Haagen, whose restaurant was the meeting place of the Hagen Society, a loose association of artists which gave rise both to the Vienna Secession and the Hagenbund. It soon positioned itself as the third major artists’ association between the avant-garde Secession and the tradition-steeped Künstlerhaus. After the Klimt Group had left the Secession in 1905, and following the Kunstschau Wien exhibitions in 1908 and 1909, the Hagenbund became an important platform for young and progressive contemporary art in the 1910s.

 

The Zedlitzhalle, The Hagenbund’s Exhibition Venue

Joseph Urban, a founding member of the Hagenbund and one of the most creative young architects in Vienna at the time, adapted a 400-m2 part of the Zedlitzhalle – a building originally erected as a market hall in Vienna’s 1st district – in 1901 to become the association’s new exhibition venue. The premises were first used for an exhibition in 1902 and provided the Hagenbund members with a sense of identity.

 

The Exhibition at the Leopold Museum

Early Landscapes and the Emperor’s Jubilee Show, Kokoschka and Schiele

The exhibition starts with early landscape paintings, by artists including Karl Mediz and Emilie Mediz-Pelikan, Ludwig Ferdinand Graf and Robert Junk. The presentation further touches upon the 1908 Emperor’s Jubilee Show, organized by the Hagenbund to mark the 60-year anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph I’s reign, as well as upon the “scandalous exhibitions” of the Neukunstgruppe in 1911 and 1912, which focused on works by Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

 

Women Artists and the Hagenbund

The presence of female artists represented an essential constant in the exhibitions of the Hagenbund. Already the Hagenbund’s opening exhibition featured the artists Leona Abel and Mediz-Pelikan as guests. The Austrian Association of Women Artists rented the Zedlitzhalle eight times. Its first group exhibition, held in 1911, included 57 female artists, among them Helene Funke.

 

Thematic Emphases: From Skepticism towards Civilization to Social Criticism

The exhibition includes several thematic emphases. The depictions range from a focus on religious themes to works expressing skepticism of civilization, and from Arcadian places of longing to apocalyptic scenarios, featuring Oskar Laske’s images of paradise and doom, Franz Barwig’s dynamic, stylized animal sculptures, Carry Hauser’s religious and socio-critical reflections, as well as Otto Rudolf Schatz’s Prater scenes and woodcut series.

 

Cubist Tendencies, New Objectivity

The 1920s, especially, are considered the Hagenbund’s heyday, when its members ultimately took the step from a moderate towards a radical Modernism. In 1922, the writer Robert Musil described the Hagenbund as “today’s most radical group”. The spectrum ranges from Cubist and crystallizing tendencies, for instance with Fritz Schwarz-Waldegg, to works in the style of New Objectivity, for example by Carry Hauser, Georg Jung and Greta Freist.

 

The End of the Hagenbund. Dissolution, Emigration and Annihilation

It was the Hagenbund’s very progressiveness that led to its dissolution, as its cosmopolitan orientation and faith in Modernism stood in contrast to the fascist tendencies prevalent in Europe at the time. The association’s liberal artistic notions, its large number of artists with Jewish roots as well as its portion of left-wing members, prompted the artists’ association’s dissolution by the National Socialists in September 1938. Many of the Hagenbund’s full, associate and corresponding members, including Georg Ehrlich and Bettina Ehrlich-Bauer, Josef Floch, Carry Hauser, Lilly Steiner, Otto Rudolf Schatz and Felix Albrecht Harta, had to emigrate, while others – like Robert Kohl and Fritz Schwarz-Waldegg – were murdered in concentration camps. Thus, the Hagenbund’s cosmopolitan and intercultural spirit was tragically and permanently extinguished.

 

Putting the Hagenbund Back in the Spotlight

Attempts to revive the Hagenbund after 1945 failed. In 1965, the Zedlitzhalle, which had suffered severe damage during World War II, was demolished, and the Hagenbund largely faded from public perception. The long overdue exhibition at the Leopold Museum has made it possible to make the Hagenbund the focus of Austrian art history once more with this presentation of masterpieces by its central protagonists.

 

Ceremonious Opening of the Hagenbund Exhibition at the Leopold Museum

The ceremonious opening of the Hagenbund exhibition was attended by numerous honorary guests, among them the Leopold Museum board members Sonja Hammerschmid, Saskia Leopold and Danielle Spera with her husband Martin Engelberg, the collector Elisabeth Leopold, Moritz Stipsicz (Commercial Director of the Leopold Museum), the collector Diethard Leopold, the co-curators of the exhibition Dominik Papst and Stefan Üner, Thomas Steiner (Austrian National Bank), the collector Ernst Ploil, Brigitte Neider-Olufs (Austrian National Bank), Prof. Tobias G. Natter (Natter Fine Arts), Leopold Birstinger (Vice-President of the Association of Friends of the Leopold Museum) and his wife Margit Birstinger, the contributors to the exhibition catalogue Verena Gamper (Leopold Museum) and Alexandra Matzner, Marianne Hussl-Hörmann (Dorotheum), Elke Königseder (Dorotheum), author Bernhard Barta, musician and lender Nikolaus Leopold, Waltraud Leopold, the lenders Johannes Bauer, Sebastian Bonhoeffer, Alexander Bühl, Prof. Falko Daim, Nikolaus Domes (Municipal and Provincial Archives of Vienna), Georg Gajewski, Peter Goldscheider (EPIC GmbH), Dietrich Kraft, Christoph and Franka Lechner, Klaus Ortner (PORR supervisory board) and Friederike Ortner, Gerd Pichler (Austrian Federal Monuments Office), Manfred Pregartbauer, Thomas Röder, Joyce Rohrmoser, Georg Spitzer, Max Weber, as well as the manager Siegfried Sellitsch, the gallery owners Florian Kolhammer-Preisinger, Roland Widder (Kunsthandel Widder), Christa Zetter (Galerie bei der Albertina), Sabine Oppolzer (Ö1), Pia Schreier (Association of Friends of the Leopold Museum), the graphic designer Nele Steinborn, Peter Sroubek (President of the Association of Friends of the Hagenbund), Christoph Mai (Friends of the Jewish Museum Vienna), Peter Grundmann (Hearonymus), and many others.

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