The Walkout

In 1897, Gustav Klimt led a group of Austrian artists out of Vienna's official art society. They were sick of a system that only rewarded safe, old-fashioned painting. They called their new movement the Secession — from the Latin for "to withdraw."

Then they did something bold: they built their own gallery, crowned with a dome of golden laurel leaves. A new house for a new kind of art.

Above the gallery door they carved their creed: "To every age its art, to art its freedom."

It was a direct shot at the Academy, which prized history scenes and classical polish above all. The Secessionists wanted the opposite — the right to paint the modern world, in modern ways, with no committee telling them what counted as proper art.