Page 20 - Studio International - September 1965

place) and the sliding walls on the upper floor.
When. in the winter of 1959/60 (two years prior to
the opening of the gallery), I was able to start buying, I
realised that it would be presumptious to try and
compete with Zurich. Munich. Paris or Basle. Never­
theless. my aim was to present on a broad international
scale an uncompromising picture of the evolution of
painting, sculpture and architecture since the time of
the 'Jugendstil' (Art Nouveau). Within this framework
the major achievements of Austrian art were to be
stressed. avoiding at all cost the mixing of works of an
international level with those of a local level-some­
thing which is inevitable. for instance. in the Basle
Museum. Therefore. quite independently of the Museum
of the 20th Century. the Austrian Gallery in Belvedere
, ;2 continues to show the inner-Austrian continuity on a

broad basis and furthermore offers the visitor the
possibility of studying in detail artists like Schiele.
Kokoschka and Klimt. whose work can figure only in
a general way in the international panorama.
The first acquisitions were sculptures by Pevsner and
Laurens. This choice already showed my intention of
giving to sculpture special consideration in the
building-up of the collection. Ever since. and not
without success. I have tried to put into practice in the
Museum the theoretical and art historical argument
advanced in my book Sculpture of the 20th Century
(Frankfurt 1958). namely, the conviction that we are
living in a great new era of sculptural possibilities. It is
this fact. as yet insufficiently realised. which the
Vienna Museum of the 20th Century is designed to
illustrate convincingly and within the framework of its
geographical position. This choice of emphasis was
furthermore determined by the fact that Vienna is
today a centre of European sculpture. To underline
this. one-man shows of the work of Wotruba. Hoflehner.
Urteil and Bertoni were organised.
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