Article: Olbrich overlooked: the fallen star of fin-de-siecle modernism, Austrian architect virtuoso Joseph. Maria extravagantly gifteded but tragically short-lived. A century after his death, he still awaits his proper place in history.

As 2008 draws to its close, this year's most glaring omission on the international decorative arts scene has been any suitable centennial observance of the death of Joseph Maria Olbrich, the avant-garde Austrian architect and design polymath. Among the most extraordinary figures of the early modern movement, Olbrich was celebrated in his own time not only as a founder of two pioneering arts associations--the aesthetically oriented Vienna Secession (1897) and the more socially engaged Deutsche Werkbund (1907)--but also as a prolific (even demonic) source of countless decorative and useful objects, machine-made as well as handcrafted.

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