Artists and prophets a secret history of modern art 1872-1972

Egon Schiele saw himself as a visionary and prophetic artist, Frantisek Kupka forged an abstract style of painting infused with spiritist principles, Joseph Beuys called under the rubric social sculpture for social change due to creative actions, and Friedensreich Hundertwasser was an ecological crusader whose spiral paintings were holistic in essence. These pioneering artistic attitudes and developments would have not come about without contact with several prophets. Some of these were artist-naturists, others were modern-day Christs, while still others saw themselves as social revolutionaries of a kind. Their relevance for modern art remains a largely untold story. Today, their names Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, Gusto Gräser, Gustav Nagel, as well as Friedrich Muck-Lamberty and Ludwig Christian Haeusser have almost been forgotten.