Name given to various groups of German and Austrian artists in the 1890s who “seceded” from official academic art institutions in order to found new schools of painting. The first was in Munich 1892; the next, linked with the paintings of Gustav Klimt and the Art Nouveau movement, was the Vienna Sezession 1897; the Berlin Sezession, led by the Impressionist Max Liebermann (1847–1935), followed 1899.
In 1910 the members of the group die Brücke formed the Neue Sezession when they were rejected by Berlin’s first Sezession.