Perhaps Austria's most famous artist, Gustav Klimt was an icon of the Vienna Secession movement, symbolist painting and Art Nouveau; his golden women are some of the most recognisable images in art history.
Read MoreGustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, near Vienna. Son of a gold engraver, Klimt studied architectural painting at what is now the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Inspired by academic painters like Hans Makart, Klimt enjoyed a successful public mural painting career with his brother, and was even awarded a Golden Order of Merit for his work in 1888.
Klimt continued with public commissions, painting frescoes for the grand staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and receiving the Emperor's Prize in 1890 for his painting Auditorium of the Old Burgtheater (1888–1889).
In 1892 both Klimt's father and brother died, catalysing a major shift in his artistic style.
Klimt's career in public art came to a halt in 1894, as his dissolution with academic painting made way for an interest in symbolist subjects. He was commissioned to paint the ceilings of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, but the resulting allegorical paintings were rejected, even disparaged, as being pornographic. Klimt vowed to no longer accept public commissions and became increasingly anti-establishment, painting nude women intended to antagonise his critics.
In 1897, Klimt became the founding president of the Vienna Secession group of artists, rejecting traditional artistic styles and embracing influences from artists abroad such as Art Nouveau. Klimt was highly influential in this group but would lead a split from the Secessionists in 1905.
During this time, and thereafter, Klimt's style reached its maturity, reflecting his interest in Japonisme, the female form and sensuality. Klimt produced many of his most iconic works, including The Kiss (1907–1908), during this 'Golden Period', called such for his striking use of gold leaf.
Alongside figurative paintings, Klimt also produced a large body of beautifully intricate and vibrant landscape paintings whilst on summer holidays on lake Attersee with his lifelong companion and muse Emilie Louise Flöge.
Much of Klimt's work was highly controversial due to its erotic nature, such as Water Serpents II (1907) which depicts lesbian desire. Nevertheless, Klimt had a profound impact on his contemporaries and younger Austrian artists, most notably Egon Schiele, and continues to be extremely popular among contemporary audiences.
Klimt died in 1918 in Vienna during the Spanish flu epidemic, leaving several unfinished works.
Gustav Klimt's work is a highlight of many prestigious international collections, including the Belvedere Museum, Leopold Museum, and Albertina, all in his native Vienna, as well as La Galleria Nazionale, Rome, National Gallery, London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Several major paintings held in museum collections have been the subject of restitution cases, sold under duress during Nazi occupation, and have since been returned to their rightful heirs, such as Rosebushes Under the Trees (1905), formerly at the Museé d'Orsay, Paris.
Gustav Klimt has been the subject of both solo and group exhibitions.
Solo exhibitions include: Gustav Klimt: The Drawings, Albertina Modern, Vienna (2022); Klimt and the Women of Vienna's Golden Age, 1900–1919, Neue Galerie, New York (2016–2017); Jubilee Exhibition: 150 Years of Gustav Klimt, Upper Belvedere, Vienna (2012–2013); and Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2001).
Group exhibitions include: After Impressionism: Inventing Modern Art, National Gallery, London (2023); Golden Boy Gustav Klimt, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (2022–2023); Vienna on the Path to Modernism, National Art Center, Tokyo (2019); and Klimt/Schiele, Royal Academy, London (2018–2019).
Gustav Klimt has been consistently one of the most sought-after artists on the secondary market, his paintings selling for nine and ten figure sums since the 1980s. Most recently, Klimt made art market history with his final work Lady with a Fan (1917–1918), which sold at Sotheby's London in June 2023 for £85.3 million, the highest price ever achieved in Europe for a work of art.
Articles on Gustav Klimt have been published in various publications, including The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Art Newspaper.
Rachel Kubrick | Ocula | 2023
