The Leopold Museum, housed in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria, is home to one of the largest collections of modern Austrian art, featuring artists such as Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl.
It contains the world's largest Egon Schiele Collection.
The more than 5,000 exhibits collected by Elisabeth and Rudolf Leopold over five decades were consolidated in 1994 with the assistance of the Republic of Austria and the National Bank of Austria into the Leopold Museum Private Foundation. In 2001 the Leopold Museum was opened.
The core of the collection consists of Austrian art of the first half of the 20th century, including key paintings and drawings by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, showing the gradual transformation from the Wiener Secession, the Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movement in Austria to Expressionism. The historical context is illustrated by major Austrian works of art from the 19th and 20th centuries.
In 2012, following a public outcry, the museum's largest street posters for the Nackte Männer (English: Naked Men) exhibition by Ilse Haider, displaying one of the exhibition's most prominent artworks, entitled Vive la France (a depiction of three naked French footballers, with their genitals fully revealed: the first black, the second Arab/Muslim and the third white, by the French artists Pierre et Gilles), were amended by the artists themselves, by the addition of a red ribbon or stripe to cover the players' genitals.
It took five decades to compile the collection. In 2001 it found its definite location. Together with the Republic of Austria and the Austrian National Bank, the collector Dr. Rudolf Leopold, who died in 2010 at the age of 85, consolidated his collection, which is now exhibited in a museum built by the Austrian state, into a private foundation. It is the largest and most visited museum in the newly created Museums Quartier. The main focus of the collection lies on Austrian art of the first half of the 20th century, including major paintings and drawings by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. Here the transition from art nouveau to expressionism gets comprehensible step by step. The art historic context is imparted by Austrian 19th and 20th century masterpieces. In the spacious rooms awash with light one does not only encounter paintings and drawings but also precious art handicraft and furniture of the era of the Wiener Werkst=E4tte and original artworks by Adolf Loos, Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann. A further focus of the collection lies on African and Oceanic sculptures. Such objects served as inspirational source for many artists of Classic Modernist movements. Until the occupation of the museum, the Leopold family lived amid the paintings and used the furniture and everyday objects. What began with the first painting purchased by the young medical student Leopold, later truly got an obsession with art. In 1994 Rudolf Leopold consolidated more than 5,000 art objects into the private foundation valued at 575 million Euros. The enormous increase in value stems mostly from the fact that the collector understood the value of art that was generally frowned upon long before others. Until the 1960s, Klimt and Schiele were not quite appreciated in Austria but even despised. Rudolf Leopold never listened to the verdicts of his contemporaries and at auctions sometimes even laid himself open to ridicule, like in 1954 when he purchased a nude study by Schiele, which was still regarded as degenerated and pornographic=93 back then, amidst laughter of the present audience. When buying or trading art, Leopold built on his esthetic judgment and time proved him right. A subjective selection grew into a broadly recognized cultural institution, a collector=92s museum. Because of its content and substance, it is impossible to imagine the Viennese museum landscape without it by now. The huge cube made of bright stone coins the entire MuseumQuartier. Inside, one can gain insight into a pivotal part of Austrian history and cultural identity. To discover overlooked art has always been and still is the principle of a collector, which also coins the program of special exhibitions. Besides academic accounting for Austrian art history, special exhibitions shine a light on confrontations of different artistic positions as well as new aspects of the collection. In conversation with Professor Leopold, he liked to trace his success story back to his talent to comprehend the creation of an art work with his artistically seeing eye. His special skill resided in a more accurate perception, in an experienced comparison and inspired highlighting of what is essential. He always used his subjective feelings and moods to make a selection, a series or presentation. By doing so, he became the creator of an artistic synthesis born out of an unswervingly avant-garde attitude and quite in the sense of the Viennese secessionists. As a museum it now bears his name, as a whole it is metonymic with the Viennese Modern Age.
The Leopold Museum Private Foundation
In 1994, the Leopold Collection was consolidated by Rudolf Leopold into the Leopold Museum Private Foundation - a foundation on a puplic benefit / non-profit basis - with the support from the Republic of Austria and the National Bank of Austria. The core of the collection consists of the most important compilation of works by Egon Schiele in the world. In addition, Austria's Classical Modernism movement is represented by major works by Gustav Klimt, Albin Egger-Lienz, Oskar Kokoschka, Richard Gerstl, and Alfred Kubin among others. There were 5,266 inventoried works of art at the time of the foundation establishment.
Purpose of the foundation:
Quote pursuant to Art. 2 of the founding document:
(1) The foundation purpose shall be to preserve the collection established by the founder on a permanent basis, to open it to the public by means of a museum, and to catalogue and study it in order to document its contribution to Austria=92s cultural development, in particular, the Modernist movement which started in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century.
(2) The foundation shall exclusively and directly pursue a non-profit-making objective within the definitions of the Federal Tax Code. It shall have no profit motive.
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