Gustav Klimt: A Guide to Klimt’s Life and Artwork

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter known for decorative paintings gilded in gold. Klimt’s work was inspired by a number of art movements in addition to Symbolism, including Impressionism and Art Nouveau. Klimt’s body of work—which includes sketches, murals, paintings, and decorative art—heavily features allegories and the female body.

The frank eroticism in his work garnered criticism and led to Klimt’s leaving the Vienna Artists' Association. Klimt was the founding president of the Vienna Secession, an art movement comprising a group of avant-garde Austrian artists that formed as a reaction to Austria’s conservative approach to contemporary art.

Klimt was a master Symbolist painter, and his ornate and erotic works made him a rabble-rouser of the early twentieth-century art world.

• Early life: Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, Austria, the second of seven children. His father was a gold engraver, and he and his two brothers shared an artistic talent. Though his childhood was marked by poverty, Klimt pursued his interest in art.
• The Künstler-Compagnie: Klimt graduated from the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in 1883. That same year, he founded an artists’ studio with his brother Ernst Klimt and another painter, Franz Matsch, called the Künstler-Compagnie (Company of Artists). Together, they painted murals that hewed closely to the highly academic and conventional historicist style.
• Public commissions: The deaths of Klimt’s father and brother Ernst in 1892 marked a shift in his artistic style. A new chapter of his career began with an 1894 commission to paint the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. Klimt’s contributions to the institution became the subject of controversy due to their unusual symbolism and “pornographic” nudes. In 1905, Klimt withdrew from his contract with the university, renouncing public commissions for the rest of his career and relying instead on wealthy patrons.
• Vienna Secession: While working on the University project in 1897, Klimt founded the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs (Union of Austrian Artists or Vienna Secession). The Vienna Secession hosted exhibitions and showcased Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze (1902).
• Death: In 1918, Klimt suffered a stroke and eventually died of a lung infection in Vienna.

Klimt’s artistic style changed dramatically throughout his career, but his linear drawings remained the cornerstone of his work. Elements of Klimt’s style include:

1. 1. Allegory: Klimt’s early work was in the popular historicist style, which either focused on figures from history and allegory or the personification of abstract concepts. Klimt’s interest in historicism later shifted to symbolism, which viewed allegory through a more abstract, ambiguous, and dreamy lens.
2. 2. Gold: Klimt’s famous use of gold was inspired by his visit in 1903 to the Basilica di San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy. After seeing the Byzantine mosaics at San Vitale, he started applying gold and silver leaf to his portraits. Klimt’s golden phase received critical attention.
3. 3. The female form: Women were Klimt’s primary subject. In his most famous portraits—like his portraits of Elisabeth Lederer and Ria Munk, which he painted between 1914 and 1917—the faces of women are realistic while their bodies are flattened. In this way, Klimt strikes a balance between traditional portraiture and the artistic movements of Impressionism and Symbolism.

Klimt’s works are among the most reproduced prints sold by museums. Klimt’s most recognizable pieces include:

1. 1. The Kiss (1908–09): Klimt’s most iconic painting came from his gold period. The painting depicts two lovers enrobed with gold leaf and decorative patterns—the man covered in rectangles and the woman in concentric circles.
2. 2. Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907): Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, one of his patrons, prominently features silver and gold leaf. The painting showcases decorative motifs including swirls, half-circles, and Egyptian eye symbols on Bloch-Bauer’s clothing. The portrait gained notoriety as the topic of an international lawsuit when Bloch-Bauer’s niece sued the Austrian government for the return of the painting, which had been confiscated from her family’s home by Nazis during World War II. After the painting’s return to the Bloch-Bauer family, it sold for a record-breaking $135 million at auction in 2006.
   
3. 3. Three Ages of Woman (1905): This allegorical painting combines one of Klimt’s favorite themes, the cycle of life, with his interest in the nude form. In this painting, a young woman holds a baby. To her left is an old woman whose face is obscured by her gray hair.

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