Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner (1841-1918) was an Austrian architect who played a key role in the transition from a purely classicist architecture, which characterized the entire first phase of his career, to the theoretical renewals which in the early twentieth century will direct the discipline throughout other direction. He achieved great fame in the 1880s with monumental neoclassical buildings inspired by the style of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, then in the following decade he was charged with overseeing the new city plan of Vienna and the extension of the city's transport network, including the its first subway. In 1894 he also began a teaching activity at the Academy of Arts in Vienna, an experience during which he began to let himself be influenced by the new ideas that circulated among his students, reducing the decorative element in his works. In 1897, three of them (Josef Hofmann, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Koloman Moser) gave life to the Secession, an association that contrasted with the pompous official aesthetic advocated by the Viennese Künstlerhaus. Two years later Wagner also joined the new movement, becoming a sort of "noble father" who used his prestige to protect and support his young colleagues. His masterpiece belongs to this period, the Postsparkasse in Vienna (1904-06), inspired by the principle of the Gesamtkunstwerk and entirely furnished with new-concept furnishings, now re-proposed by Gebrüder Thonet Vienna.