At the end of the 19th century, there was a growing criticism of the materialism of industrialized society. Many aspired to a new life close to nature. People enthusiastically read Friedrich Nietzsche and interpreted Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal as a pacifist manifesto. The painter Hans Makart painted scenes from the Ring of the Nibelung. Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach - a Wagner admirer, artist prophet and nudist - founded a rural commune in Vienna in 1897. The Viennese Secessionists indulged in Wagner's ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk.
Modern, Far Eastern-influenced theosophy 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 neighboring countries, trance states were recorded by established painters such as Albert von Keller and Gabriel von Max.
Edvard Munch, Moonlight, 1893 © Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design, Oslo, Photo: Børre Høstland/Jacques Lathion
The writer August Strindberg, who had a pronounced penchant for esotericism, painted gloomy visions of landscapes. The work of his friend Edvard Munch and the belief in the existence of life-giving, invisible rays provided new artistic impulses. Richard Gerstl, Arnold Schönberg, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer understood their models as auratic apparitions. Modern psychology entered into a synthesis 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 addressed in a major survey exhibition, without excluding the darker aspects of magical thinking. In this sense, the Hidden Modernity project also makes a contribution to the critique of the present.
September 4, 2025 to January 18, 2026
