Vienna: The Villas of Otto Wagner

A good deal of my travel over the past few years has focused on Art Nouveau, and especially on its architecture, in the various cities where the style—or should I say styles?—developed near the end of the 19th century. Over that time, it’s become clear to me that within the context of a broad artistic movement, architects developed many variations, albeit linked by common elements—changing forms, forms from nature and often symbols from mythology.

In Vienna, one of the key cities in the development of Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil, Otto Wagner played a key role. Major architect and mentor of others, active participant in the artistic debates of the Secession, theorist of architecture—and a man whose own work shows changing style and theory. I’m starting my look at Art Nouveau in Vienna with two villas, side by side in the Vienna Woods, that Wagner built for himself, one early in his career and one twenty years later.

Villa Wagner I, seen above, is now a museum that mixes Wagner’s design with artwork by Ernest Fuchs. Because the museum was closed the day of my visit, I’ve had to rely on other sources for interior images.

Wagner’s early work, in the 1860s and 1870s largely followed the style of the time, which involved combining references and forms from a variety of older styles, but by the time of Villa I in 1886, he had begun to incorporate art and forms we now recognize as Art Nouveau, even while retaining references to older styles. In Villa I, that can be seen in the Palladian forms of the building itself, matched with artwork, especially tile and glass that herald the new.

Wagner and his family lived in the house until 1911, with various alterations creating studio space, a billiard room and even a bowling alley. Wagner’s colleagues in Vienna’s artistic community were frequent visitors. During Wagner’s years at Villa I, the major works of his career developed in Vienna, including many apartment buildings, banks and more. His best-known work of the period, ironically came from his commission as the design consultant for Vienna’s Stadtbahn transit system; Long after Art Nouveau faded as a popular style, his stations persisted as icons of Vienna. But that’s for another day.

By 1911, when Wagner sold the villa to another family, his children were grown—and perhaps more importantly—his architectural and artistic views had changed. In speeches and writings, he proclaimed that ‘historicism’ was dead and “Art and artists have the duty and obligation to represent their period. The application here and there of all the previous styles, as we have seen in the last few decades, cannot be the future of architecture…The realism of our time must be present in every newborn work of art.”

That commitment can be seen in the spare forms of the new house he built next door, referred to as Villa Wagner II. The lines are clean, the classical references are gone, but the asymmetrical facade is fully decorated, this time in tile and glasswork that continues on the side and rear. The tile and glass designs are mostly the work of Wagner’s long-time collaborator Koloman Moser, whose work also features in Villa I.

The interiors of Villa II, for which I could find no pictures because the house has been privately-owned and occupied for all the years since Wagner’s death in 1918, were much simpler; Wagner is said to have meant it to be a residence for his widow, but she died two years before him.

And now we turn a moment to Ernest Fuchs, and Villa I’s afterlife. Ben Tieber, the new owner was a well-known Austrian theater director who owned and operated Vienna’s Apollo Theater. After his death in 1925, his family remained in the house until it was seized by the Nazis because the family was Jewish. From 1938 to 1945, it was a Hitler Youth headquarters; after the war, it stood empty for years and deteriorated so badly it was nearly demolished in 1963. It was rescued in 1970 by Ernest Fuchs. Fuchs, who died in 2015 was an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.

Art Nouveau was out of style, but Fuchs counted Wagner’s Secession colleague such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele as important early influences in his own work, which includes the statue above outside Villa I. He also built a fantastical fountain house on the Villa grounds, evoking images of what could almost be called ‘psychedelic Art Nouveau’—I find it both charming and repelling, but a lot can be forgiven the man who saved Wagner’s work.