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Life and workEarly life & educationGustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna, Austria, the second of seven children-- three boys and four girls.[2] His father, Ernst Klimt, was a gold engraver, albeit financially unsuccessful, who married Anna Klimt (née Finster). Klimt lived in poverty for most of his childhood. Klimt was enrolled, at 14, in the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in 1876, where he studied until 1883, and received training as an architectural decorator. In 1877 his brother Ernst, who, like his father, would become an engraver, also enrolled in the school. The two brothers and their friend Franz Matsch began working together and by 1880 the three had received numerous commissions. Klimt began his professional career painting interior murals in large public buildings on the Ringstraße.
Vienna secession yearsImage:Gustav Klimt 014.jpg A section of the Beethoven Frieze Klimt was one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897, and of the group's periodical Ver Sacrum (Sacred Spring). He remained with the Secession until 1908. Beginning in the late 1890s Klimt took annual summer holidays with the Flöge family on the shores of Attersee and painted many of his landscapes there. These works constitute the only genre aside from the figure that seriously interested Klimt,[3] and are of a number and quality so as to merit a separate appreciation. Formally, the landscapes are characterized by the same refinement of design and emphatic patterning as the figural pieces. Deep space in the Attersee works is so efficiently flattened to a single plane, it is believed that Klimt painted them while looking through a telescope.[4] In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to create three paintings to decorate the ceiling of the Great Hall in the University of Vienna. Not completed until the turn of the century, his three paintings, Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence were criticized for their radical themes and 'pornographic' material. As a result, they were not displayed on the ceiling of the Great Hall. This would be the last public commission accepted by the artist. All three paintings were eventually destroyed by retreating SS forces in May 1945. (See Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings for more detail.)
Golden phase and critical successImage:Gustav Klimt 016.jpg The Kiss. 1907–1908. Oil on canvas. Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. Gustav Klimt's 'Golden Phase' was marked by positive critical reaction and success. Many of his paintings from this period utilized gold leaf; the prominent use of gold can first be traced back to Pallas Athene (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907 - 1908). Later life & posthumous successIn 1911 his painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibition in Rome. In 1915 his mother Anna died. Gustav Klimt died three years later in Vienna on February 6, 1918 of a stroke and was interred at the Hietzing Cemetery, Vienna. Numerous paintings were left unfinished. Image:Adele Bloch-Bauer I Gustav Klimt01.jpg Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which sold for a record $135 million in 2006. Neue Galerie, New York. Klimt's paintings have brought some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art. In November of 2003, Klimt's Landhaus am Attersee sold for $29,128,000,[5] but that was soon eclipsed by prices paid for other Klimts. In 2006 the artist's Apple Tree I (ca. 1912) sold for $33 million and Birch Forest (1903) sold for $40.3 million.[6] Both works had been recently restituted to the heirs of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Purchased for the Neue Galerie in New York by Ronald Lauder for a reported US $135 million, the 1907 portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I deposed Picasso's 1905 Boy With a Pipe (sold May 5, 2004 for $104 million) as the highest reported price ever paid for a piece of art sold at a public auction, on or around June 19, 2006. This is one of the five paintings referred to below in the Legacy section and an NPR report.[7] On August 7, 2006 Christie's auction house announced it was handling the sale of the remaining works by Klimt that were recovered by the Bloch-Bauer heirs after a long legal battle. They auctioned Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II in November 2006 for $88 million, the third-highest priced piece of art at auction at the time.[8] Collectively the five restituted paintings, including aforementioned landscapes, netted over $327 million.[9] Style & recurring themesKlimt's work is distinguished by the elegant gold or coloured decoration, often of a phallic shape that conceals the more erotic positions of the drawings upon which many of his paintings are based. This can be seen in Judith I (1901), and in The Kiss (1907–1908), and especially in Danaë (1907). One of the most common themes Klimt utilized was that of the dominant woman, the femme fatale. Art historians note an eclectic range of influences contributing to Klimt's distinct style, including Egyptian, Minoan, Classical Greek, and Byzantine inspirations. Klimt was also inspired by the engravings of Albrecht Dürer, late medieval European painting, and Japanese Ukiyo-e. His mature works are characterized by a rejection of earlier naturalistic styles, and make use of symbols or symbolic elements to convey psychological ideas and emphasize the "freedom" of art from traditional culture. Legacy
Selected worksImage:Gustav Klimt 039.jpg Judith and the Head of Holofernes, 1901. Image:Gustav Klimt 068.jpg Avenue in Schlob Kammer Park, (1902) Image:Gustav Klimt 010.jpg Danaë by Gustav Klimt, painted 1907. Image:Gustav Klimt 021.jpg The Friends, 1916-17. Image:Gustav Klimt 050.jpg Mäda Primavesi. 1912. Oil on canvas. 150 × 110 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image:Klimt Mulher sentada.jpg Mulher sentada, (1916)
See also
References
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![[2]](http://www.lamp.ac.uk/philosophy/phil.jpg){kind=link}
![[3]](http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klimt/klimt.beethoven-frieze1.jpg){kind=link}
![[4]](http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/klimt/klimt.beethoven-frieze2.jpg){kind=link}
![[5]](http://www.ecfs.org/Projects/Fieldston65/bome/cities/vienna/eband/Sochynsky/Pictures/Jurisprudence.jpg){kind=link}
