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Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918)

Gustav Klimt was one of the most innovative and controversial artists of the early twentieth century. He introduced Modern art to Vienna, and co-founded and led a group of artists and architects called the Vienna Secession, who were to create the Austrian version of French Art Nouveau.

Klimt was born in a suburb of Vienna, Austria in the summer of 1862. His father, a gold engraver, nurtured Klimt's interest in art. His abilities were recognized early on and at the age of 14, he received a scholarship to the State School of Applied Arts in Vienna.

He had success in the 1880s and 1890s with State commissions for murals in theatres, museums, and churches, painted in the prevailing classical-realist style.

Reflecting Vienna's end-of-the-century mood of intense obsession with the contrasts between life and death and austerity and pleasure, his style grew increasingly experimental, and in 1894, murals he painted for the University of Vienna were violently attacked by critics because their figures were considered too sensual and gloomy rather than heroic.

Deciding his artistic integrity was under threat, Klimt never accepted another public commission. In 1897, he co-founded the Vienna Secession, a group of artists dedicated to challenging the conservative art establishment. Rejecting popular contemporary imagery, the artists sought inspiration from exotic sources, most notably Byzantine mosaics.

Klimt was best known for his paintings of the human figure, most famously The Kiss (1907-08), in which beautifully rendered figures float in space wrapped in a richly patterned, mosaic robe. He often used gold paint, and his flowing and rhythmic lines and organic contours would profoundly influence the Art Nouveau Movement (The Virgin, Mother and Child).

Klimt spent most of his summers on a lake near Salzburg, where he drew inspiration for many of his paintings, including Schloss Kammer Sull'Attersee, which is filled with rich golden hues and mosaic-like reflections.

Klimt's style drew upon an enormous range of sources, from classical Greek, Byzantine, Egyptian, and Minoan art, to late-medieval painting, to photography. He masterfully synthesized these diverse sources, infusing his art with both individuality and extreme elegance.

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