Two Poster Designs for the Planned Exhibition “New Austrian Art – Zurich Kunsthaus”, 1916

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) created these two poster designs in 1916 for the exhibition New Austrian Art which he was planning to organize at the Zurich Kunsthaus. Despite the artist’s repeated attempts over many years, however, the project was never implemented. His ambitions to organize an international art exhibition were not supported in the nationalist atmosphere that prevailed during World War I. Unlike Schiele, the Viennese artist Carl Moll (1861–1945) was more successful in realizing his exhibition plans for A Century of Viennese Painting. From May until June 1918, the Zurich Kunsthaus presented “an overview of the development of Viennese painting in the last one hundred years”, based on Moll’s concept. The show presented works by artists that were central to the Viennese scene, such as Hans Böhler (1884–1961), Anton Faistauer (1887–1930), Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980), as well as four paintings and several drawings by Egon Schiele.

AKe, 2023