Vienna, a city that was renowned for its aristocratic elegance and captivating operetta melodies, causes us to feel spontaneous reactions due to its unique history, culture, and most importantly, psychology. Being the cradle of Zionism, anti-Semitism, Austrian Marxism, and neo-corporatism, Vienna is the extraordinary laboratory of an intellectual avant-garde committed to redefining modern subjectivity. People like Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Ernst Mach, all lived here, and for the very first time, psychoanalysis was given such power to note the personality of people. Not only them, but Gustav Mahler, the composer of his symphonies; Robert Musil, who wrote the greatest novels of the nineteenth century; Gustav Klimt, who created stunning portraits with a varied amount of symbolist elements; Arnold Schonverg, who created a twelve-tone music, all were like the limelights of the great city, Vienna. Hence, the entire artistic experience of the period seemed to mark the awareness of living with fractures of reality. Karl Kraus defined it in a sinister way, “The proving ground for the obstruction of the world.” Not only this, there were several novels and literature written at this time, which later shaped the phenomenon of art as well. For instance, Oskar Kokoschka later wrote, “People lived in security, nonetheless they were full of fear. I perceived this through their refined manner of living, still derived from the Baroque. I painted them in their anxiety and their panic.” Similar to these writers and painters, in Anatol’s era, the lead character in Schnitzler’s plays and the cynical characters in his La Ronde were puppets in a nihilistic, sleepwalking game of love. And therefore, the images of women flooded the literature and art of that time. In time, they became more and more reminiscent of a deadly idol that was necessary. In the epoch of sex phobia, Otto Weininger, a young Viennese Jew, wrote a rambling book about female inferiority called Sex and Character, about the sexual origins of neuroses. Adding to these obsessions, Gustav Klimt, the golden artist of the Fin-Siecle Viennese style, also portrayed the destructive power of Eros, the erotic superiority of women, and the idea of the metamorphic, elusive, eternal feminine in his artwork. Klimt, however, seemed to overturn Weininger’s misogynistic assumptions. Hence, throughout the historical art of Vienna, the city of Vienna transformed itself with the new regime, and these changes were more than mere facts. Sensed by very few intellectuals, one of them was Gustav Klimt, the creator of the most fascinating and dramatic paintings, which reveals an artist’s journey to achieve a reconciliation between what he considered to be the best of the past with a vision that was unconventional and modern. Today, we are exploring a few of Gustav Klimt paintings, which will take us on a nostalgic journey of his artistic world.
Artist Abstract: Gustav Klimt.
Born on 14 July 1862 in Baumgarten in the XIVth district of Vienna, Gustav Klimt was the second of the seven children of Ernst Klimt, a goldsmith and engraver, and Anna Finster. Of Gustav’s brothers and sisters (Karla, Ernst, Hermine, Georg, Anna, and Johanna), only two had an artistic career. The only memories of his childhood are of his sister, Hermine. In his childhood, he was fond of animals, he could be very noisy at times, and he loved to eat dumplings. The financial condition of the family was not too good, as portrayed by this statement,
“At Christmas, there wasn’t even any bread at home, let alone presents.”
When Gustav was eleven, the family’s condition worsened as there was an economic crisis in Austria, and the Vienna stock market collapsed.
Hermine remembered the way by which we understand how Gustav turned his career into a painter,
“Gustav went to the secondary school in the Lerchenfelder Straße. He was always an outstanding pupil. A teacher there… advised Gustav’s father to arrange for Gustav’s talent for drawing to be developed. One of his mother’s relatives recommended that he try for the Kunstgewerbeschule because, after graduating from there, there was a possibility of work in industry or choosing a profession relating to drawing teacher. Gustav passed the entrance examination brilliantly and began his studies in the autumn of 1876.”
The teachers of Klimt were largely forgotten, but Laufberger remained important. Laufberger was a painter, who was highly thought of and specialized in decorative work, mainly historical scenes for public buildings. Being an excellent student, his drawings from life and plaster casts of Classical sculpture he produced at the school, he had a precocious degree of technical mastery. We will focus on his life with another article dedicated to it as of now; let us look towards his fantastic exhibition of Gustav Klimt Paintings
The portraits made by Klimt included the subject, society ladies, and his allegorical figure compositions and sumptuous decorative schemes with many finished with gold and silver lead, entrusted by the semi-precious stones. However, his works have not been only confined to portraits or allegories as he also painted some of the remarkable landscapes. Being the draughtsman of genius, his artistic philosophy was undermined at times and made redundant even at the moment of his great success.
21 Gustav Klimt Paintings and Their Meaning.
1. Fable.
This Gustav Klimt painting was composed in 1833, two years after his publication, where he showed a comprehensive series of models that other artists used as they composed their paintings on historical or allegorical themes. In this artwork, he contained no hints of his extraordinary future development as it belongs to his early career. In this same year, Gustav and his brother, Ernst, with their fellow student Franz Matsch, became successful enough to set up their own studio in Vienna’s Sandwirthgasse, making many joint projects.
Like many Gustav Klimt paintings, the focus of the canvas is a nude figure, holding a pen and rolled-up sheet of paper while being surrounded by the animals, traditionally portraying the fables of Aesop, held to have been a male Greek slave. As a result of sparing a mouse, a lion is rewarded when the mouse nibbles away the netting he was trapped in, while the other shows storks taking revenge on the fox, who is faced with a dinner that he cannot reach and must leave for the birds’ long beaks.
| Year Painted | 1833, Vienna |
| Genre | Allegorical |
| Period | Neoclassicism |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 84.5 x 117 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Wien Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria |
2. Idyll.
In 1883, when Gustav, his brother Ernst, and his schoolmate Franz created a small artistic company, they used to share a studio and commissions. Since there was a lot of work, the Empire of Vienna also spread the supernational message through the construction or renovation of the theatres in its provinces. Three of the artists worked in the Makart style as they decorated the public buildings in Vienna, the royal castle in Pelesch, Transylvania, and the bedroom of Hermesvilla.
Idyll, like Fable, was one of the paintings from the series of illustrations that was commissioned by the publisher Martin Gerlach in 1881 when Gustav was mere 19. Some of the paintings, that included this collection were The Four Seasons, The Times of Day, and Youth. Now, Idyll is a Gustav Klimt painting that has a distinct resemblance to a painted panel meant for a wall, which he used to paint in the Markart style. The composition shows two males in different postures with flexed muscles and bodies, one of them seeing toward the viewer. The figures are directly inspired by Michelangelo, nothing that we will find in the mature Gustav Klimt paintings. At the center of the painting, a small frame is idealized with a nude woman offering to two little kids. The classical theme of the painting is pretty convincing as per the taste of the time.
| Year Painted | 1884 |
| Genre | Allegorical |
| Period | Neoclassicism |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 49.5 x 73.5 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Wien Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria |
3. Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater.
The painting represents the first official commission of the small company (Gustav, Ernst, and Franz) to decorate the official site in Vienna, the new Burgtheater, which was designed by the architects Gottfried Semper and Karl von Hasenauer to replace the old theater of the Maria Theresa. In this composition, Franz Matsch was responsible for creating the auditorium, whereas Gustav filled the painting with portraits of Vienna’s most prominent citizens, some of whom are based on his own family members. Upon closer inspection, you will notice that each face is recognizable. By the end of the painting, there were more than 100 portraits, which is a huge accomplishment, a tour de force for which Gustav was awarded the Emperor’s prize. The composition includes musician Johannes Brahms, the great surgeon Billroth, politician Karl Lueger, and popular actor Alexander Girardi, all of them recognizable. The use of illusionism and faithfulness to the physical appearance is clearly visible in this style.
| Year Painted | 1884 |
| Genre | NA |
| Period | Neoclassicism |
| Medium | NA |
| Dimensions | 82 x 92 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Wien Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria |
4. Theatre in Taormina.
The old Vienna Burgtheater was recorded by Gustav before it was demolished, and he and his partners also decorated the new theater. A historical scene related to the theatre was painted on the ceilings above the two main staircases. While contemporaries highly regarded Gustav Klimt paintings and their artistry, this job was notably different from his deeply personal works of maturity: the artists chose the subjects themselves, and the workmanlike attitude of the artists can be seen in the fact that they drew lots to decide which areas to paint. The painting comprises a panoramic view of the Greek theater in Taormina, Sicily, with a unique perspective to include the majesty of theater with the view of sculptures, nature, and architecture. In a brief memoir, Frans Matsch recalled their thoughts just after the work was finished,
“Finally the day of completion came. When we saw our work for the first time complete and with the scaffolding removed we were seized by doubts. Gustav Klimt’s reaction especially was drastic- ‘ghastly’, ‘horrible’, and that kind of thing. Our verdict was ‘beautiful’. Then the message came that… all the members of the building commission would be coming… our first thought was ‘clear out’… but we were energetically persuaded to stay… Finally, they arrived. Full of admiration, congratulations, great contentment. Gustav Klimt whispered secretly to me in Viennese dialect, ‘Did the work make us daft or are they?’ Reassured although not satisfied, we went home… Scarcely twenty-six years old, the Klimts and I received the Gold Medal with Crown from His Majesty… in recognition of our work.”
| Year Painted | 1888 |
| Genre | Allegorical and Nude Depiction |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Fresco |
| Dimensions | 750 × 400 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | The Burgtheater, Vienna |
5. Portrait of Joseph Pembauer.
One of the earliest Gustav Klimt Paintings, Portrait of Joseph Pembauer, conveyed the combination of naturalistic portraiture and stylized decoration, which was new to European art. Gustav tried managing and earning money through his portraits from photographs, a more demanding practice than the conventional portraiture executed by a model. Hence, he tried to execute the portraiture by capturing the likeness with photographic accuracy, which stood him in good stead, as we saw in the painting The Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater. In this composition, Gustav painted the pianist, Joesph Pembauer, with his lined hair and intent face as if he is unnervingly present. The red background with the golden lyre contrasts well with the figure of the pianist. In addition to this, the engrossed copper frame looks more daring.
| Year Painted | 1890 |
| Genre | Portraiture |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 69 x 55 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Tyrolean State Museum in Innsbruck, Austria |
6. Love.
When Gustav’s father and his brother Ernst died in 1892, Gustav’s partnership with the artist Franz Matsch also broke up. For many years, he did not produce many paintings, perhaps he was dissatisfied with the kind of art that is much praised. Hence, in the upcoming series, Allegories and Emblems, he really enjoyed a considerable vogue. This series included this composition, Love, a sentimental celebration of romance. This Gustav Klimt painting portrays the lover in black and white cast, stooping to kiss her. She is wearing a white dress with a gleaming light over her radiant face, standing as if she is drowned in love. Gustav provided the acceptable fare to contrast this ludicrously with the sex-saturated work in his future works. The painting depicts the emotions of romance and love as lovers are engrossed in their devotion to each other. Above them, a few figures hover, which includes a sinister note in the traditional fashioned love.
| Year Painted | 1895 |
| Genre | Love Allegory |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 62.5 × 46.5 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Wien Museum Karlsplatz, Vienna, Austria |
7. Tragedy.
Tragedy was the second painting of the series, Allegories and Emblems, which appeared between 1896 and 1900. Now, many of you might get the illusion of considering Tragedy as a painting, but it is an immensely skillful drawing, done with black chalk and pencil. Gustav got the idea to paint the composition as the tragedies were long written and performed in ancient Greece, where all the men wore masks. Here in this painting, the subject removed his mask a few moments before, revealing the possessor as a woman. This is one of the Gustav Klimt paintings showing the beginning of Klimt’s career when he began his own style, which was influenced heavily by the symbolism. Further, the border decorations, having an interesting resemblance to the spiky seem to be inspired by the sinister creations of the British illustrator Arthur Rackham. An allegorical language dominates the composition, and an arabesque-like curvilinear Jugendstil motif, temporarily inspired by Jan Theodre Toorop, forms the surrounding strip. However, it is worth noting that the vision of ancient meaning is not clear here, but it rather appeals to the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy. The demonic sexuality dominates in the guise of the girl with a dark and fixed gaze as she wears a black dress adorned with jewels and holds a mask in her hand. To the lower right of the canvas, the branch with the heart-shaped leaves symbolizes the Eros, which returns in the future painting, The Kiss.
| Year Painted | 1897 |
| Genre | Allegorical |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Mixed media, Black chalk, and pencil |
| Dimensions | 42 x 31 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Historisches Museum der Stadt or Vienna Museum |
8. Flowing Water.
By 1898, Gustav broke all of his Viennese establishments and started heading the new Secession group of artists as he was still a thoroughly respectable and reputed artist. In the Flowing Water painting, Gustav showed himself as the master of erotic-ness, which was never approved in his lifetime. The painting shows the long lines of moving water with a trailing long-haired figure, outstretching her limbs as if they combine to create a sense of universal flow, beyond any thought. The long-haired figures are women, that display their unconcealed nakedness as they are carried along in a watery and sensual dream, portraying the psychoanalytical theories of sexuality and the unconscious mind. Further, a bulging-eyed male head appears in the bottom right corner of the painting, peering voyeuristically at the female figures above. The controversial figures may represent the theories of Sigmund Freud from his book The Interpretation of Dreams.
| Year Painted | 1898 |
| Genre | Psychoanalytical Painting |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | NA |
| Price | NA |
| Where is it housed? | NA |
9. Pallas Athene.
The painting, Pallas Athene is based on one of the panels, which Gustav painted for Vienna’s new Kunsthistorisches Museum in 1890-1 while he was just a student and worked as a mural painter. In 1897, Klimt had been appointed president of the Secession, a breakaway artistic group that had Pallas Athene as its symbolic protector. He used this belief in this artwork as he represents a female with a splendid clad in a helmet and mail breastplate with a gorgon’s head device on it. This gorgon shows his protruding tongue, which might be in response to the Secession’s critics. To the right of the goddess, she holds a small figure of the Nike (a Greek Goddess). One point to note here is that the embossed copper frame was designed by Gustav’s brother, Georg.
This artwork was one of the seven Gustav Klimt paintings, that he painted for his Secession exhibition. The painting Pallas Athene shows a classical subject, which, like his poster, alludes to the Secession’s image of itself as a heroic protagonist in the battle for artistic originality and quality. In the background, Gustav painted for Hercules’s battles with Triton. The extraordinary use of gold leaf in this painting with a decorated frame foretells the story of late Gustav Klimt paintings.
| Year Painted | 1898 |
| Genre | Mythological Painting |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 75 × 75 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Vienna Museum |
10. Portrait of Sonja Knips.
As I told you earlier there were seven paintings of Gustav Klimt exhibited at the second secession exhibition (1898-9), showcasing a fairly conventional work. The Portrait of Sonja Knips is a painting which is one of the paintings from this exhibition, portraying an elegant woman posing as a slender figure with a soft feathery dress. Gustav made this feathery dress with such perfection that it created a flattering effect worthy of a professional portraitist. The painting’s period coincided with the period in Klimt’s career when he used to make much of his income through female portraiture, as his patrons proved responsive to his increasingly erotic and unorthodox art. This is why he never lacked patrons or suffered bankruptcy. The Portrait of Sonja Knips remained one of the first great portraits of Gustav’s career, which was in a square format, as we know from the two early sketches done in 1898 for the university still remain fluidly atmospheric. In the silvery tones and soft focus with atmospheric effects, the painting looks to be inspired by Whistler.
| Year Painted | 1898 |
| Genre | Portraiture |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 145 x 145 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Belvedere Palace and Museum, Vienna |
11. Schubert at the Piano.
The subject of this Gustav Klimt painting is Franz Schubert, a Viennese composer whose brief and unhappy life gave a wealth of beautiful songs and an extraordinary appeal among Austrians. Gustav portrayed him in a quieter mood, surrounded by the lovely women in a candle-lit darker atmosphere. The omen particularly is very much Viennese, reminiscent of Klimt’s own day, in contrast to paintings like Theater in Taormina, executed for official institutions. Similarly to the painting Music I, Schubert at the Piano was commissioned for Nikolaus Dumba’s villa’s music room and destroyed by fire in 1945.
| Year Painted | 1899 |
| Genre | Portraiture |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | Unknown |
| Price | NA |
| Where is it housed? | Destroyed Artwork |
12. Nuda Veritas.
The painting, Nuda Veritas or Naked Truth, is an enlarged version of the Pallas Athene. The only change in this painting is the posture of the arms, the fact that the figure is holding up a mirror of truth to the spectator. She has red curly hair with a few flowers in them. The snake in the painting shows the falsehood or slain by truth, or acts as a potent sexual symbol. One of the great German poets and dramatists, Friedrich Schiller, gave a quotation on these words,
“You cannot please everyone by your deeds and your art: do the right things for the sake of the few. To please the many.”
This quote gave a new direction to the artistic career of Klimt as he signaled by adhering to the Secession. According to Jungian psychology, the monster or serpent-shaped creature devours his children and is monstrous, from which the red-haired lady protects.
| Year Painted | 1898 |
| Genre | Allegorical, Mythological |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 36.8 × 10.8 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Vienna Museum |
13. Mermaids.
Known by other names like Silverfish or Water Nymphs, this Gustav Klimt painting is one of the most powerful and erotic images of women associated with water. As we saw in The Flowing Water, the fishy presence is often grotesque or lumpy and can be interpreted more as a voyeuristic than an active sexual agent, though the silverfish in this painting might be interpreted differently. The painting has a distinct cheerful mood with one of the girls in it thrusting her bottom out towards the viewer. The mermaids are in general dangerous entities, which Gustav portrayed through his wit and artistry.
| Year Painted | 1899 |
| Genre | Mythological |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 82 x 52 cm |
| Price | Unknown |
| Where is it housed? | Privately Owned |
14. Hygieia.
The painting shows a magnificent and commanding figure, with the only surviving record, in color reproduction, out of the three most scandalous and controversial Gustav Klimt paintings for the University of Vienna. Representing Hygieia, the Greek Goddess of medicine, she appears at the bottom of Klimt’s completed version of the Medicine. Gustav showed her in gleaming and shining apparel with brightness and strength to heal. Though it is said that in the black and white reproduction of the Medicine, the figure remains the stark testimony to pain and sorrow. Through the Sphinx/Isis, Truth/Sibyl, and the priestess Hygieia, Gustav asserted the feminine’s sovereignty in Philosophy and Medicine. The figure tends to wear a bright orange dress with a golden yellow chain and jewels over her body. Similar to this, a long golden serpent runs through her hand.
| Year Painted | Between 1900-07 |
| Genre | Mythological |
| Period | Art Nouveau |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 430 x 300 cm (Approx.) |
| Price | NA |
| Where is it housed? | Destroyed |
15. Judith and Holofernes.
The Judith and Holofernes is an apocryphal Biblical story where a Jewish heroine saved her people from the hosts of the Nebuchadnezzar, King of Assyria. In one of my previous articles, I have explained the most famous version of Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia, which you can refer to know the complete relevance of the Biblical story. In Gustav’s version of Judith, he portrayed her with such sensual feelings in a modern dramatic way.
The painting is the most celebrated femme fatale among the early Gustav Klimt paintings, marking the beginning of Gustav’s golden style, which reached its peak in 1909 when he painted Judith II. The Golden style of Gustav had a peculiarity within itself which was the use of pure gold leaf and gilded paper, but above all in the structural role, assumed in the painting. The Klimtian gold seeks to show reality as in the Byzantine mosaics by fixing the image in a sublime eternal transcendence by freezing it in the metal’s distance and perfection, by the technique of Italian artist Gentile da Fabriano. The rosy body like an orchid boxed with jewels and gold exalts a seductive and deadly female archetype, governing the era of fantasy and Gustav’s imagination.
| Year Painted | 1901 |
| Genre | Religious |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 84 x 42 cm |
| Price | Unknown |
| Where is it housed? | Belvedere Palace and Museum, Vienna |
16. The Hostile Powers, From the Beethoven Frieze.
The artwork is one of the darkest and densest of the Beethoven Frieze panels, representing the infernal region full of snares for the human soul after death. According to the exhibition, the huge ape depicts ‘the giant Typhoeus, against whom the Gods themselves fought in vain,’ along with his three gorgon daughters; Sickness, Madness, and Death, and their victims beside them. The central figures show Debauchery, Unchastity, and Excess, where Excess is a tribute to the British artist, Aubrey Beardsley. To the right side, the gaunt figure of corroding grief clutches herself and gets trapped in a dark winding sheet. The painting is a message of the gnawing grief due to the yearnings and desires of humankind’s past. Felix Salton wrote,
“An aristocratic patron and collector whom the Secession allowed in before the opening with other intimate friends became noisy when he saw Klimt’s frescoes. He shouted the word with a high, shrill, sharp voice as though someone had pinched him. In the quiet, it sounded like the report of a cap gun. He dashed the word against the walls like a stone. ‘Ghastly’… Klimt.. turned around, moved to the edge of the scaffolding, and looked down, very much down, at the fleeing Count. And he pulled a face, the kind of nice, friendly face… similar to that pulled when a child behaves in an all too human way in the middle of the room.”
| Year Painted | 1902 |
| Genre | Allegorical |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Casein paint on plaster inlaid with various materials |
| Dimensions | 220 x 636 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna (central panel) |
17. A Kiss for the Whole World From the Beethoven Frieze.
Through the scene of A Kiss for the Whole World, Gustav portrayed a visual equivalent to the passionate choral outburst at the end of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The painting portrays a choir but the joy and strength are portrayed more forcefully through the wealth of decoration and powerful embrace of the naked couple. Though he pictured Debauchery, Unchastity, and Excess as vices in the above painting, he showed fulfillment through the use of erotic terms.
| Year Painted | 1902 |
| Genre | Allegorical |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Casein paint on plaster inlaid with various materials |
| Dimensions | 220 x 1381 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Osterreichische Galerie, Vienna (right-hand panel of the Beethoven Frieze) |
18. Portrait of Emilie Flöge.
The stunning portrait is the beginning of Gustav’s new era of artistic journey where he used larger areas of detailed decorative patterning which almost engulfs in his human figures, leaving their face and hands in a naturalistic way. The painting was a labour of love for a woman who had companionship for around 25 years with Gustav though they never married or were physically intimate. There is a little sene of a rounded body beneath the extravagantly patterned dress or the hat with the abstract ornamentation. The space behind her drastically is flattened and is rendered simply with two areas of color, while the two signatures of the artist are positioned to add compositional weight to the lower part of the painting. Hevesi described the artworks as,
“the standing woman in the blue, green and gold, in the Japanese manner or that of the makers of faience.”
| Year Painted | 1902 |
| Genre | Portraiture |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 181 x 84 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Vienna Museum |
19. Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is one of the most famous and beautiful Gustav Klimt paintings which portrays the wife of industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.
Being the only woman who was painted twice and posed for the Judith and Holofernes, she had a real willingness to serve as Klimt’s model, suggesting an exceptional intimacy. The artist portrayed her in royalty with her hands and face alive, fresh, and highly realistic with the unbelievably opulent gold and silver setting, raiding her to the status of a divinity in a mosaic. The painting is comparable to the 6th-century Byzantine mosaics in Ravenna, which showed the Empress Theodora with gold encasing. The painting portrays Adele Bloch Bauer against a jewel box, looking oppressed by her weighty legacy, Spain’s decline, and her sad reality. There is also a second version of the painting, composed in 1912.
| Year Painted | 1907 |
| Genre | Portraiture |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Oil and gold on canvas |
| Dimensions | 138 x 138 cm |
| Price | $250 Million (2012), Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Neue Galerie, New York |
20. The Kiss.
One of the most celebrated paintings of Gustav Klimt, The Kiss is generally regarded as the apogee of the ‘golden period’ which portrays the glittering geometric ornamentation threatened to engulf the female figure. It is remarkable how the compositional strength of the figures is balanced with their emotional force, exemplified by the compact kneeling pose, the man’s powerful embrace, and the woman’s ecstasy. Alongside the kneel, on a delightful bank of flowers, gold and silver leads surround the couple lavishly. In this artwork, the faces and hands are engraved into the golden landscape and the hangings completely cover the couple.
In The Kiss, the theme of loving fusion and the healing power of Eros and art return with intensity, even with lyrical decorative excess, making it an ideal centerpiece of the great Kunstschau exhibition, as well as the apotheosis and swan song of Viennese modernism. Hermann Hesse wrote a few lines for the painting,
“Again my eager mouth seeks to encounter
Your lips that bless me with their kisses
I wish to hold your dear fingers
And enlace them playfully in mine.”
| Year Painted | 1907-8 |
| Genre | NA |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 180 x 180 cm |
| Price | Not on sale |
| Where is it housed? | Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
21. Death and Life.
Gustav’s Death and Life is one of his last great allegories, with abstract titles that clearly indicate the meaning behind them. In other paintings like The Virgin and The Bride, the message is more poetic as opposed to programmatic. A skeletal death is confronted in his sinister way in the huddle of humanity confronted in cross-strewn robes portraying a time-honored style. The artwork remained subsequently altered as it remained unsold and won the International Exhibition in 1911 in Rome.
| Year Painted | 1908-11 |
| Genre | Allegorical |
| Period | Art Nouveau (Modernism) |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 178 x 198 cm |
| Price | Unknown |
| Where is it housed? | Private Collection |
Final Words.
Gustav Klimt paintings are filled with enormous creativity, symbolism, and innovation with the essence of absolute beauty. There are many more paintings of the artist, which speak of his symbolism and seeing things in life, which you might find in the books of his biographers because it is impossible to summarize the eternal meaning of his paintings through a few words or articles. However, I tried giving you a brief introduction to his paintings, taking you closer to his art.
Resources.
- The Life and Works of Gustav Klimt by Nathaniel Harris.
- Artists in Context Gustav Klimt by Frank Whitford.
- Gustav Klimt Art Nouveau Visionary by Eva di Stefano.
- Featured Image: Hygieia & The Kiss by Gustav Klimt, Gustav Klimt, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frequently Asked Questions.
Gustav Klimt is known for many paintings, given his applauding style, however, the most significant pieces he composed are Idyll, The Kiss, Love, and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
While the artist painted more than 200 compositions throughout his lifetime, many of these works were destroyed in fire or under the Nazi occupation. Some of the surviving works of the artist are Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Death and Life, Love, Idyll, Fables, The Kiss, and more. The biggest collection of Gustav Klimt exists at The Belvedere collection.
Most of Gustav Klimt’s paintings are portraits and showcase Symbolism, Realism, and the influences of Byzantine Mosaics.
The works of Gustav Klimt have appeared on auction several times, including the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I which sold for $135 million.
While the artist loved cats and had several of them roam in his studios, no painting record can prove that Gustav Klimt painted cats. However, there is a portrait that shows him holding a cat in his arms. The picture is from the collection of the library of Austrian National Library.
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