Art

Gustav Klimt

1862–1918 · Austrian

Vienna Secession (Art Nouveau / Symbolism)

Gustav Klimt was the leading painter of fin-de-siècle Vienna and a founder and first president of the Vienna Secession in 1897. His "Golden Phase" canvases, glittering with real gold leaf and flat decorative patterning, fuse Symbolism, Art Nouveau and frank eroticism, and made him the defining artist of Viennese modernism.

How to spot them

▸Gold leaf everywhere: figures dissolve into flat, mosaic-like ornamental patterns of spirals, squares and circles
▸Realistically modelled faces and hands emerging from a flat, decorative gold robe or background
▸Sensual, often languid or ecstatic women (femmes fatales) are his central subject
▸Quiz clue pattern: Vienna, Secession, "Golden Phase", the Belvedere, Adele Bloch-Bauer or "Woman in Gold"

Key works

The Kiss (1907–1908)

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

Embracing couple wrapped in a golden cloak on a flowery meadow; the icon of his Golden Phase

Image: Gustav Klimt · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)

Neue Galerie, New York

The "Woman in Gold"; Nazi-looted, restituted in 2006 and bought by Ronald Lauder for $135 million

Image: Gustav Klimt · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Beethoven Frieze (1902)

Secession Building, Vienna

Mural cycle made for the 1902 Secession exhibition celebrating Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony

Image: Gustav Klimt · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Judith I (1901)

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna

Biblical heroine as seductive femme fatale holding Holofernes' severed head

Image: Gustav Klimt · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Stoclet Frieze (including The Tree of Life) (1905–1911)

Palais Stoclet, Brussels

Mosaic dining-room frieze featuring the swirling Tree of Life

Image: Gustav Klimt · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Quick-fire facts

•Klimt co-founded the Vienna Secession in 1897 and served as its first president
•The Secession Building's motto reads "To every age its art, to art its freedom"
•His father was a gold engraver, often linked to his love of gold leaf
•His University of Vienna ceiling paintings (Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence) caused scandal and were destroyed by fire at Schloss Immendorf in 1945
•The 2015 film Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren, tells the story of the restitution of Adele Bloch-Bauer's portrait
•He died in Vienna in February 1918 after a stroke, complicated by pneumonia
•He was a mentor to the younger Expressionist Egon Schiele

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Sources

Encyclopaedia Britannica — Gustav Klimt
Frank Whitford — Klimt Thames & Hudson World of Art