Biography:

The Young Artist: 1862-1894

Gustave Klimt was born in 1862, one of seven children of a gold engraver who grew up in poverty in the last years Emperor Franz Joseph’s Austria. At age 14 Klimt entered the School of Applied Arts, leaving in 1883 to help support his family by taking public commissions. From the 1880s to 1890s, Klimt executed murals and other works for public buildings, which were considered highly controversial by the conservative Viennese art world for their innovative decorative style and often erotic themes.

Scandal and Secession: 1894-1897

In 1894, Klimt executed a series of murals for the Viennese University which incurred the wrath of Viennese critics for their audacious decorative style and overt eroticism. The resulting scandal (the works were condemned as pornographic) helped inspire the artist to break away from the conservative Academy of Fine arts. In 1897, Klimt and 15 other artists formed the Vienna Secession with Klimt as president. The Secession was dedicated to the promotion of experimental and innovative art and the cultivation of young talent, in an effort to bring Vienna out of its stagnant, stodgy past and launch it onto the international art scene.

The End of an Era: 1897-1918

Klimt continued to receive prominent public commissions until the outbreak of World War One, when the artist changed his focus to society portraits for the Viennese elite and landscapes until his death from stroke in 1918.

Love and Squalor:

The more personal aspects of Klimt’s life remain shrouded in mystery. As is evident from his paintings, which often treat subjects such as male-female relationships and the femme fatale, Klimt was a rapacious lover of women and in fact fathered 14 illegitimate children. For 27 years Klimt maintained a fusional relationship with Emilie Flöge, but his affairs with prominent (and married) society women were notorious, his conquests including the leading femme fatale of the age, Alma Mahler, and the wealthy Adele Bloch-Bauer. These women often appear in various guises in Klimt’s paintings. Little else of Klimt’s personal life is known; his public has little recourse but to take the artist’s own advice and carefully study his paintings to try to gain an insight into the man behind them.

Major Works:

Van Gogh was an extraordinarily prolific artist, and his oeuvre cannot fairly be reduced to a handful of key works. However, amongst some of the most notable works from different points of his career are the following:

Judith I, 1907, oil and gold on canvas, Österreichische Galerie, Vienna. 84 x 42 cm.

Danaë, 1907, oil and gold on canvas, private collection, Vienna. 77 x 83 cm.

Hope II, 1907-08, oil, gold, and platinum on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York. 43 1/2 x 43 1/2" (110.5 x 110.5 cm).

The Kiss, 1907-08, oil and gold on canvas, Österreichische Galerie, Vienna. 71 x 71 in (180 x 180 cm).

Style: “Enough of censorship…I want to break free”

Artistic influences:

Klimt’s background in the decorative arts (from his gold engraver-father to his studies in decorative art as a young man at the fine arts academy) had an undeniable influence on his mature style as a painter. The artist’s interest in the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna and Venice also constitute a key stylistic influence. Klimt’s works are thus notable for their decorative elements, including the application of gold to the canvas surface, and dominating geometric patterns. The flat, compressed space in Klimt’s paintings also reveals the artist’s interest in the Japanese wood-block prints so popular at the end of the century, and the influence of Byzantine mosaics and archaic art.

Geometry:

Klimt’s paintings bear witness to the artist’s love for geometric forms: his preferred canvas format was a square, which he found to be the most complete of geometric shapes. In his paintings, the male principle is usually represented by rectilinear shapes (squares and rectangles), while the female principle is represented by curvilinear, flowing shapes.

Expressionism:

Gustave Klimt was a major force in the dawn of the Expressionist movement, and several Expressionist elements are evident in his work. Realistic depiction of space and form are utterly abandoned for a subjective abstraction, and the figures are often distorted and exaggerated. The faces in Klimt’s paintings tend to be relatively neutral, the artist concentrating on the hands, which are emphasized and exaggerated for expressive purposes, a technique employed by several Expressionist painters.