Secession Building

The Secessin building is an exhibition hall built in 1897 by Joseph Maria Olbrich as an architectural manifesto for the Vienna Secession (also known as "the Association of Visual Artists Vienna Secession") which was formed that same year by a group of Austrian artists including painters, sculptors, and architects. The first president of the Secession was Gustav Klimt, and Rudolf von Alt was made honorary president. The Secession artists objected to the prevailing conservatism of  the long-established fine art institution Vienna Künstlerhaus with its traditional orientation toward Historicism. The construction of the Secession building, a key work of Viennese Art Nouveau, was finished after only 6 months. Needless to say that the architecture didn´t meet the taste of that time: The building was dismissed as a "a bastard between temple and warehouse" and "a cross between a greenhouse and a blast furnace", the dome was compared to "a head of cabbage".