GUSTAV
1862 - 1918
KLIMT
Cloaked in richly interwoven patterns of gold or silver, of mosaics, of the exotic, of fairy-tale illustrations of fable birds and animals, of ornamental or floral motifs, of mystical whirls or Kaleidoscopes of radiant colours, the agressive nudity that features in Klimt is directed towards the secrets of unconscis and labyrinths of the mind. As the portrayer of Woman, the good-living, feminine, amourous woman, even the femme fatale, Klimt, with his powerfully suggestive portraits of beautiful Viennese society ladies, placed the emphasis, in the same way as Freud, on the importance of sexuality as the principal aspect of life and indeed its key.

Gustav Klimt was a Viennese painter and the founder of the Vienna Secession, the Austrian Art Nouveau movement. As a highly gifted student he decorated the walls of the Burgtheater, the staircase of the Art History Museum, the University of Vienna and the stoclet Palace. As an art revolutionary he headed the Secession of 1897, in reaction against the official academic world and bourgeois conservatism. His early work, consisting principally of large murals for theaters, was painted in an unremarkable naturalistic style. After 1898, Klimt's work moved toward greater innovation and imagination, taking on a more decorative, symbolic aspect. He continued to paint murals, but the harsh public criticism of the three murals Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence (1900-1902, Vienna University; destroyed 1945) led him to concentrate on panel painting. Klimt's best-known works are his later portraits, such as Frau Fritsa Reidler (1906, Österreichische Galerie, Vienna), with their flat, unshadowed surfaces, translucent, mosaic colors and forms, and sinuous, curling background lines and patterns. Among his most admired works is the series of mosaic murals (1905-1909) in the Palais Stoclet, an opulent private mansion in Brussels designed by the architect Josef Hoffmann, who was also a member of the Vienna Secession movement.
 

Bella Gallery