Five Schools, Built to Deepen · Vienna Secession
Plakat für die XIV. Ausstellung der Secession (Beethoven exhibition)
Alfred Roller · Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs — Secession, 1902
What it is
A colour lithograph poster designed by Alfred Roller in 1902 to advertise the fourteenth exhibition of the Vienna Secession. It survives at 95.5 by 62.5 cm.
Why it matters
That fourteenth show was the Secession's most ambitious act of stagecraft: an entire building reworked around Max Klinger's Beethoven statue, with Klimt's Beethoven Frieze painted on the walls to frame it. Roller made the poster that called Vienna in to see it, working for the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs at the height of the movement's belief that a poster, a frieze, and a sculpture were one continuous work. It belongs to the moment the Secession tried to make an exhibition into a total art object.
What to notice
Note the extreme vertical proportion — the sheet runs more than twice as tall as it is wide, a narrow column built to read from a distance on a street.
The handbill for a room that wanted to be a cathedral.
Provenance
- School
- Vienna Secession (Various)
- Designer
- Alfred Roller
- Printer / house
- Not stated on the source page
- Format
- Exhibition poster
- Poster published
- Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs — Secession, 1902
- Source
- MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna · Not stated on the source page
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 24x36" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
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