The Wiener Gruppe (''Vienna Group'') was a small and loose avant-garde constellation of Austrian poets and writers, which arose from an older and wider postwar association of artists called

Art-Club Art-Club was an association of artists during the postwar period in Vienna, Austria, in 1946–1959. History Art-Club was formed with the intention of fighting for the autonomy of modern art. This rather late standpoint in art history should be vie ...

. The group was formed around 1953 under the influence of

H. C. Artmann Hans Carl Artmann (12 June 1921 – 4 December 2000), also known as Ib Hansen, was an Austrian poet and writer, most popular for his early poems written in Viennese language, Viennese (''med ana schwoazzn dintn'', 1958), which however, ne ...

(1921–2000) in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and existed for about a decade. Besides Artmann are

Friedrich Achleitner Friedrich Achleitner (23 May 1930 – 27 March 2019) was an Austrian poet and architecture critic. As a member of the Wiener Gruppe, he wrote concrete poems and experimental literature. His magnum opus is a multi-volume documentation of 20th-cent ...

(1930–2019),

Konrad Bayer Konrad Bayer (17 December 1932 – October 1964) was an Austrian writer and poet. A member of the Wiener Gruppe, he combined apparently irreconcilable elements—violence, hermeticism, pessimism, ecstasy, banality—and influences (dadaism, surre ...

(1932–1964),

Gerhard Rühm Gerhard Rühm (born 12 February 1930 in Vienna) is an Austrian author, composer and visual artist. Biography Rühm studied the piano and music composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Following his studies he unde ...

(b. 1930), Ingrid Wiener and Oswald Wiener (b. 1935) regarded as members. This group showed interest in

Baroque literature The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...

, as well as in

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

Dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris ...

and

Surrealism Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...

. Important impulses also came from upholders of linguistic scepticism, linguistic criticism and linguistic philosophy, such as

Hugo von Hofmannsthal Hugo Laurenz August Hofmann von Hofmannsthal (; 1 February 1874 – 15 July 1929) was an Austrian novelist, librettist, poet, dramatist, narrator, and essayist. Early life Hofmannsthal was born in Landstraße, Vienna, the son of an upper-class ...

Fritz Mauthner Fritz Mauthner (22 November 1849 – 29 June 1923) was an Austrian novelist, theatre critic and satirist. He was an exponent of philosophical scepticism derived from a critique of human knowledge and of philosophy of language. Mauthner was bo ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...

. The linguistic awareness of the Wiener Gruppe was also displayed in the members' notion of language as optic and acoustic material. Already in the early 1950s

concrete poetry Concrete poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry, a term that has now developed a distinct mea ...

became an exciting new element of at least the works of Rühm, Achleitner and Wiener. Readings and recordings became important parts of the activity. With the charm of novelty, several members also made use of the richness of sounds and vocabulary of their own Bavarian and Vienna dialect. Furthermore, the group was trying out text

montage Montage may refer to: Arts and entertainment Filmmaking and films * Montage (filmmaking), a technique in film editing * ''Montage'' (2013 film), a South Korean film Music * Montage (music), or sound collage * ''Montage'' (Block B EP), 201 ...

.artmann, bayer and rühm: ''montagen 1956'' (1964)

Footnotes

Literature

* Gerhard Rühm (ed.): ''Die Wiener Gruppe: Achleitner, Artmann, Bayer, Rühm, Wiener'' (Rowohlt, Reinbek 1985) . * Peter Weibel (ed.): ''die wiener gruppe. a moment of modernity 1954-1960 / the visual works and actions.'' (Springer, Wien & New York 1997) - Exhib. cat.

Biennale di Venezia The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

* F. Achleitner and P. Weibel (ed.): ''Wiener Gruppe'' (1997) * F. Achleitner and W. Fetz (ed.): ''Wiener Gruppe''. (Exhib. cat., Kunsthalle Wien, 1998) * Michael Backes: ''Experimentelle Semiotik in Literaturavantgarden. Über die Wiener Gruppe mit Bezug auf die Konkrete Poesie'' (Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München 2001) . * Thomas Eder, Juliane Vogel: ''„verschiedene sätze treten auf“. Die Wiener Gruppe in Aktion'' Profile. Magazin des Österreichischen Literaturarchivs der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Bd. 15.(Wien 2008) * : Vienna 1950/60. An Austrian Avant-Garde (2009)
Online academia.edu
Poetry movements Culture in Vienna Literary movements Austrian contemporary artists {{lit-mov-stub