Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body,Template:Sfn and his works are marked by a frank eroticism.Template:Sfn Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. He is best known for The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods.

Early in his career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he began to develop a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticised as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his "golden phase", many of which include gold leaf. Klimt's work was an important influence on his younger peer Egon Schiele.

Klimt died in 1918, having suffered from a stroke and pneumonia. Since his death, Klimt's paintings have brought some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art at auction.

Biography

Early life

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna in the Austrian Empire on 14 July 1862. He was the second of seven children: three boys and four girls. His mother, Anna Klimt (née Finster), had an unrealised ambition to be a musical performer. His father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, was a gold engraver formerly from a peasant family in Bohemia.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn All three of their sons, including Klimt's younger brothers Ernst and Template:Interlanguage link, displayed artistic talent early on. Klimt's siblings occasionally acted as models for his early works.Template:Sfn

Klimt's father often struggled to find work and Klimt lived in poverty while growing up. Between 1862 and 1884 the family had no fewer than 5 different addresses, forced to move in search of cheaper accommodation. The family's struggles worsened in 1874 when five-year-old Anna died after a long illness. Around the same time, Klara, the eldest child, became mentally disturbed and obsessed with religion. She never recovered, and their mother is believed to have suffered frequent, deep depressions.Template:Sfn

Klimt received a basic education at an ordinary Bürgerschule, where his drawing ability was recognised as remarkable.Template:Sfn At the age of fourteen, he was accepted into the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule, a school of applied arts and crafts, now the University of Applied Arts Vienna, where he studied architectural painting from 1876 until 1883.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He studied under Ferdinand Laufberger and later Julius Victor Berger after Laufberger's death in 1881. Klimt revered Vienna's foremost history painter of the time, Hans Makart, and aspired to replicate his success.Template:Sfn Klimt readily accepted the principles of conservative training; his early work may be classified as academic.Template:Sfn His professional career began by painting interior murals and ceilings in large public buildings.

The "Company of Artists"

File:Gustav Klimt in 1887.jpg

Gustav Klimt in 1887

In 1877, Klimt's brother Ernst, who would become an engraver like their father, also enrolled in the Kunstgewerbeschule. Klimt, Ernst, and their friend Franz von Matsch, whom Klimt had met during the entrance examination, soon began working together. By 1880, they had formed a team called the Künstlercompagnie, the "Company of Artists", and secured numerous commissions. They also helped their teacher in painting murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.Template:Sfn Laufberger recommended them to Fellner & Hellmer, a Viennese firm specialising in theatre construction, with whom they were involved in many projects including in Fiume, Reichenberg, Karlsbad and Bucharest.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

After leaving the Kunstgewerbeschule in 1883, Ernst, Klimt, and Matsch moved into a joint studio in Vienna to work together on various commissions. This work included ancestral portraits based on engravings for the Romanian royal palace of Peleș Castle.Template:Sfn In 1886 the studio partnership worked on painting decoration in the Karlsbad municipal theatre, notably painting the vaulted ceiling and theatre curtain.Template:Sfn The same year they also started work on the ceiling and spandrel murals for the two staircases of the Burgtheater in Vienna. It is for Klimt's contributions to these murals that upon their completion in 1888, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria awarded him the Gold Cross of Merit, the highest artistic honour available in Austria.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He was also made an honorary member of the University of Munich and the University of Vienna.Template:Sfn Before the demolition of the Old Burgtheater, The Viennese City Council commissioned Klimt to paint a view of its interior. His painting, Audience at the Old Burgtheater, helped him obtain recognition among Vienna's high society and he received public acclaim. In 1890, Klimt became the first recipient of the newly created Template:Interlanguage link award for this work.Template:Sfn

In 1892 the Künstlercompagnie experienced continued success and moved into a larger studio in the Josefstadt district. However later that year Klimt's father died of a stroke,Template:Sfn and his brother Ernst died from pericarditis after a heavy cold.Template:Sfn Their deaths had a significant impact on Klimt and he now assumed financial responsibility for both of their families. Grief may have impacted Klimt's artistic vision as he produced little work during the following few years.Template:Sfn He would soon move towards a new personal style, characteristic of which is the inclusion of Nuda Veritas ("naked truth") as a symbolic figure in some of his works, including Ancient Greece and Egypt (1891), Pallas Athene (1898) and Nuda Veritas (1899). Historians believe that with the inclusion of Nuda Veritas, Klimt was denouncing both the Habsburg monarchy and Austrian society, which ignored all political and social problems of that time.

Klimt met Austrian fashion designer Emilie Louise Flöge in the early 1890s, a sibling of his sister-in-law, Helene Flöge, who had become widowed after Ernst's death. Emilie was to be his lifelong companion and although their relationship was intimate, it likely remained platonic.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Klimt's painting, The Kiss (1907–08), is thought to be an image of them as lovers which was painted five years after Klimt's 1902 full-length portrait of her, Portrait of Emilie Flöge. He designed many costumes that she produced and modelled in his works. Klimt had many relationships with women and fathered at least fourteen children. After his death, the legal rights of four of these children were officially recognised.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to create three paintings, known as the Faculty Paintings, to decorate the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. Not completed until the turn of the century, his three paintings, Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence were criticised for their radical themes and material, and were called "pornographic".Template:Sfn Klimt had transformed traditional allegory and symbolism into a new language that was more overtly sexual and hence more disturbing to some.Template:Sfn The public outcry came from all quarters—political, aesthetic and religious. As a result, the paintings were not displayed on the ceiling of the Great Hall. This was to be the last public commission accepted by the artist. All three paintings were destroyed when retreating German forces burned Schloss Immendorf in May 1945, together with another ten paintings, including Schubert at the Piano, Girlfriends (or Two Women Friends), Wally (portrait), The Music (II).

Vienna Secession years

File:Gustav Klimt 014.jpg

A section of the Beethoven Frieze, at Secession Building, Vienna (1902)

In 1897, Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Vienna Secession and of the group's periodical, Ver Sacrum ("Sacred Spring"). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase the work of members.Template:Sfn The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to encourage any particular style—Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The government supported their efforts and gave them a lease on public land to erect an exhibition hall. The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts—of whom Klimt painted his radical version in 1898.

His Nuda Veritas (1899) defined his bid to further "shake up" the establishment. The starkly naked red-headed woman holds the mirror of truth, while above her is a quotation by Friedrich Schiller in stylised lettering: "If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please only a few. To please many is bad."Template:Sfn In 1902, animated by resentment Klimt wanted to title the painting Gold Fish (in which a naked woman ostentatiously and maliciously shows her butt), "To my critics", but was dissuaded by friends.

In 1902, Klimt finished the Beethoven Frieze for the Fourteenth Vienna Secessionist Exhibition, which was intended to be a celebration of the composer and featured a monumental polychrome sculpture by Max Klinger. Intended for the exhibition only, the frieze was painted directly on the walls with light materials. After the exhibition the painting was preserved, although it was not displayed again until restored in 1986. The face on the Beethoven portrait resembled the composer and Vienna Court Opera director Gustav Mahler.

In 1905, dissensions within the Secession increased, and when the artistic consultant of the Galerie Mietkhe Carl Moll was attacked by colleagues of the Secession for his work, a strong controversy arose which created a real internal split, led by Klimt. The following year, Klimt formed the group called "Kunstschau" (Art Show) or "Klimt group", which also included Moll and Otto Wagner, among other important Austrian artists.

During this period Klimt did not confine himself to public commissions. Beginning in the late 1890s he took annual summer holidays with the Flöge family on the shores of Attersee and painted many of his landscapes there, such as Schloss by the Water. These landscapes constitute the only genre aside from figure painting that seriously interested Klimt. In recognition of his intensity, the locals called him Waldschrat ("forest demon"). Klimt's Attersee paintings are characterised by the same refinement of design and emphatic patterning as the figural pieces. Deep space in the Attersee works is flattened so efficiently to a single plane that it is believed that Klimt painted them by using a telescope.

Golden phase and critical success

File:Gustav Klimt, 1907, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Neue Galerie New York.jpg

Adele Bloch-Bauer I , which sold for a record $135 million in 2006, Neue Galerie, New York (1907)

File:The Kiss - Gustav Klimt - Google Cultural Institute.jpg

The Kiss, oil on canvas, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna (1907–1908)

File:Preparatory design - Klimt - Stoclet Palace.jpg

Klimt often used decorative patterns in his paintings. Die Umarmung ("The Embrace"), the Stoclet Palace in Brussels (1905–1909)

File:Friedrich Walker, plaque autochrome-Lumière, Gustav Klimt vers 1910.jpg

An early colour photo taken of Klimt using Autochrome technology, 1910s

File:Egon Schiele - Gustav Klimt im blauen Malerkittel - 1913.jpeg

Klimt in a light Blue Smock by Egon Schiele, 1913

From 1900 Gustav Klimt became famous above all as a "painter of women". He created about one large-format portrait of a woman per year, in which he applied the principles of Art Nouveau - flatness, decoration, and gold leaf application. At the same time, he devoted himself to allegories and Old Testament heroines, which he transformed, however, into dangerous "femmes fatales". Eros, sexuality and femininity were variously interpreted by him as alluring danger. Life, love, and death can be determined as the important themes of Klimt's work. During the early years of the Secessionist Movement, Klimt began incorporating gold leaf into his paintings, a development that would come to define the start of his so-called "Golden Phase". Pallas Athena (1898) is often considered to be the earliest piece from this period, with Judith I (1901) being another notable early example. The most iconic works of this period include Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), The Kiss (1907–08) and the Stoclet Frieze (1905–1911). Klimt's golden phase was marked by positive critical reaction and financial success.

Klimt travelled all over Europe, mainly to present his works on the occasion of international exhibitions, but trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their beautiful mosaics, most likely inspired his gold technique and his Byzantine imagery. In 1904, he collaborated with other artists on the lavish Stoclet Palace, the home of a wealthy Belgian industrialist that was one of the grandest monuments of the Art Nouveau age. Klimt's contributions to the dining room, including both Fulfillment and Expectation, were some of his finest decorative works, and as he publicly stated, "probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament."Template:Sfn

In 1905, Klimt painted The Three Ages of Woman, depicting the cycle of life. He created a painted portrait of Margarete Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein's sister, on the occasion of her marriage. Then, between 1907 and 1909, Klimt painted five canvases of society women wrapped in fur. His apparent love of costume is expressed in the many photographs of Flöge modelling clothing he had designed.

As he worked and relaxed in his home, Klimt normally wore sandals and a long robe with no undergarments. His simple life was somewhat cloistered, devoted to his art, family, and little else except the Secessionist Movement from which he and many colleagues eventually resigned. He avoided café society and seldom socialised with other artists. Klimt's fame usually brought patrons to his door and he could afford to be highly selective. His painting method was very deliberate and painstaking at times and he required lengthy sittings by his subjects. Although very active sexually, he kept his affairs discreet and he avoided personal scandal.

The artist cultivated close relationships with some of his clients, who were primarily from the assimilated Jewish Viennese Haute bourgeoisie. He cultivated intimate relationships, especially with his models from upper-class circles. He was considered progressive for his time, because he allowed women an active role in sexuality.

Klimt wrote little about his vision or his methods. He wrote mostly postcards to Flöge and kept no diary. In a rare writing called "Commentary on a non-existent self-portrait", he states "I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women... There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night ... Whoever wants to know something about me ... ought to look carefully at my pictures."Template:Sfn

In 1901 Hermann Bahr wrote, in his Speech on Klimt: "Just as only a lover can reveal to a man what life means to him and develop its innermost significance, I feel the same about these paintings."

Final years and death

In 1911 Klimt's painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. He later reworked it in 1915, including changing the background from gold to blue.Template:Sfn In 1915 Klimt's mother, Anna, died.Template:Sfn

On 11 January 1918, Klimt suffered a stroke that paralysed his right side and required hospitalisation. He died in Vienna on 6 February from pneumonia brought about by the Spanish flu, aged 55.Template:Sfn He was buried at the Hietzing Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna.Template:Sfn Numerous paintings by him were left unfinished.Template:Sfn

Folios

Gustav Klimt: Das Werk

The only folio set produced in Klimt's lifetime, Das Werk Gustav Klimts, was published initially by Hugo Othmar Miethke (of Galerie Miethke, Klimt's exclusive gallery in Vienna) from 1908 to 1914 in an edition of 300, supervised personally by the artist. The first thirty-five editions (I-XXXV) each included an original drawing by Klimt, and the next thirty-five editions (XXXVI–LXX) each with a facsimile signature on the title page. Fifty images depicting Klimt's most important paintings (1893–1913) were reproduced using collotype lithography and mounted on a heavy, cream-colored wove paper with deckle edges. Thirty-one of the images (ten of which are multi-coloured) are printed on Chine-collé. The remaining nineteen are high-quality halftone prints. Each piece was marked with a unique signet—designed by Klimt—which was impressed into the wove paper in gold metallic ink. The prints were issued in groups of ten to subscribers, in unbound black paper folders embossed with Klimt's name. Because of the delicate nature of collotype lithography, as well as the necessity for multi-coloured prints (a feat difficult to reproduce with collotypes), and Klimt's own desire for perfection, the series that was published in mid-1908 was not completed until 1914.

Each of the fifty prints was categorised among five themes:

1. Allegorical (which included multi-coloured prints of The Golden Knight, 1903 and The Virgin, Template:Circa)
2. Erotic-Symbolist (Water Serpents I and Water Serpents II, both c. 1907–08 and The Kiss, c. 1908)
3. Landscapes (Farm Garden with Sunflowers, 1907)
4. Mythical or Biblical (Pallas Athena, 1898; Judith and The Head of Holofernes, 1901; and Danaë, c. 1908)
5. Portraits (Emilie Flöge, 1902)

The monochrome collotypes as well as the halftone works were printed with a variety of coloured inks ranging from sepia to blue and green. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria was the first to purchase a folio set of Das Werk Gustav Klimts in 1908.

Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen - "Twenty-five Drawings"

Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen ("Twenty-five Drawings") was released the year after Klimt's death. Many of the drawings in the collection were erotic in nature and just as polarising as his painted works. Published in Vienna in 1919 by Gilhofer & Ranschburg, the edition of 500 features twenty-five monochrome and two-colour collotype reproductions, nearly indistinguishable from the original works. While the set was released a year after Klimt's death, some art historians suspect he was involved with production planning because of the meticulous nature of the printing (Klimt had overseen the production of the plates for Das Werk Gustav Klimts, making sure each one was to his exact specifications, a level of quality carried through similarly in Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen). The first ten editions also each contained an original Klimt drawing.

Many of the works contained in this volume depict erotic scenes of nude women, some of whom are masturbating alone or are coupled in sapphic embraces.Template:Sfn When a number of the original drawings were exhibited to the public, at Galerie Miethke in 1910 and the International Exhibition of Prints and Drawings in Vienna in 1913, they were met by critics and viewers who were hostile towards Klimt's contemporary perspective. There was an audience for Klimt's erotic drawings, however, and fifteen of his drawings were selected by Viennese poet Franz Blei for his translation of Hellenistic satirist Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans. The book, limited to 450 copies, provided Klimt with the opportunity to show these more lurid depictions of women and avoided censorship thanks to an audience composed of a small group of (mostly male) affluent patrons.

Gustav Klimt An Aftermath

Composed in 1931 by editor Max Eisler and printed by the Austrian State Printing Office, Gustav Klimt An Aftermath was intended to complete the lifetime folio Das Werk Gustav Klimts. The folio contains thirty coloured collotypes (fourteen of which are multi-coloured) and follows a similar format found in Das Werk Gustav Klimts, replacing the unique Klimt-designed signets with gold-debossed plate numbers. One hundred and fifty sets were produced in English, with twenty of them (Nos. I–XX) presented as a "gala edition" bound in gilt leather. The set contains detailed images from previously released works (Hygeia from the University Mural Medicine, 1901; a section of the third University Mural Jurisprudence, 1903), as well as the unfinished paintings (Adam and Eve, Bridal Progress).

Selected works

Paintings

• Pallas Athena, 1898, Vienna Museum
  Pallas Athena, 1898, Vienna Museum
• Portrait of Sonja Knips, 1898
  Portrait of Sonja Knips, 1898
• Medicine, c. 1899–1907. Destroyed 1945
  Medicine, c. 1899–1907. Destroyed 1945
• Judith I, 1901, Belvedere
  Judith I, 1901, Belvedere
• The Three Ages of Woman 1905, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
  The Three Ages of Woman 1905, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna
• Portrait of Fritza Riedler, 1906, Belvedere
  Portrait of Fritza Riedler, 1906, Belvedere
• Danaë, 1907, Private Collection, Vienna
  Danaë, 1907, Private Collection, Vienna
• Hope II, 1907–08, Museum of Modern Art
  Hope II, 1907–08, Museum of Modern Art
• Avenue in Schloss Kammer Park, 1912, Belvedere
  Avenue in Schloss Kammer Park, 1912, Belvedere
• The Maiden, 1913, National Gallery Prague
  The Maiden, 1913, National Gallery Prague
• Girlfriends or Two Women Friends, 1916–17, Galerie Welz. Destroyed 1945
  Girlfriends or Two Women Friends, 1916–17, Galerie Welz. Destroyed 1945
• Lady with a Fan, c. 1917–18
  Lady with a Fan, c. 1917–18

Drawings

File:Gustav Klimt - Rosebushes under the Trees - Google Art Project.jpg

Rosebushes under the Trees, c. 1905

File:Klimt - Oberösterreichisches Bauernhaus.jpeg

Oberösterreichisches Bauernhaus, 1911

In 1963, the Albertina museum in Vienna began researching the drawings of Gustav Klimt. The research project Gustav Klimt. Die Zeichnungen, has since been associated with intensive exhibition and publication activities.

Between 1980 and 1984 Alice Strobl published the three-volume catalogue raisonné, which records and describes all drawings by Gustav Klimt known at the time in chronological order. An additional supplementary volume was published in 1989. In the following year Strobl transferred her work to the art historian and curator Marian Bisanz-Prakken, who had assisted her since 1975 in the determination and classification of the works and who continues the research project to this day. Since 1990, Marian Bisanz-Prakken has redefined, documented, and scientifically processed around 400 further drawings.

This makes the Albertina Vienna the only institution in the world that has been examining and scientifically classifying the artist's works for half a century. The research project now includes information on over 4,300 works by Gustav Klimt.

• Two Female Nudes Standing, c. 1900, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
  Two Female Nudes Standing, c. 1900, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Girl Seated in a Chair, 1904, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
  Girl Seated in a Chair, 1904, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Portrait of a Woman, c. 1910, National Gallery of Art
  Portrait of a Woman, c. 1910, National Gallery of Art
• Seated woman masturbating, 1913
  Seated woman masturbating, 1913
• Curled up Girl on Bed, The National Gallery of Art. (ca. 1916–1917)
  Curled up Girl on Bed, The National Gallery of Art. (ca. 1916–1917)

Legacy

Influence and reception

Already during his lifetime, Klimt influenced other artists, such as the Italian Liberty style artist Galileo Chini (1873–1956). Klimt was exhibited at the 1910 Venice Biennale. Chini and Vittorio Zecchin (1878–1947) created a number of panels in 1914 for the Venice Hotel Terminus called "La Primavera" and "Mille e una notte". These were later exhibited in the Boncompagni Ludovisi Decorative Art Museum.

Klimt's work had a strong influence on the paintings of Egon Schiele, with whom he would collaborate to found the Kunsthalle (Hall of Art) in 1917, to try to keep local artists from going abroad. Artists who reinterpreted Klimt's work include Slovak artist Rudolf Fila.

According to the writer Frank Whitford: "Klimt of course, is an important artist—he's a very popular artist—but in terms of the history of art, he's a very unimportant artist. Although he sums up so much in his work, about the society in which he found himself—in art historical terms his effect was negligible. So he's an artist really in a cul-de-sac."

Posthumous auction history

File:El príncipe Guillermo Nii Nortey Dowuona - Gustav Klimt.jpg

Prince William Nil Nortey Dowuona (1897)

Klimt's paintings have brought some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art. In November 2003, Klimt's Landhaus am Attersee sold for US$29,128,000, but that sale was soon eclipsed by prices paid for Willem de Kooning's Woman III and later Klimt's own Adele Bloch-Bauer II, the latter of which sold for $150 million in 2016. More frequently than paintings, however, the artist's works on paper can be found on the art market. The art market database Artprice lists 67 auction entries for paintings, but 1564 for drawings and watercolours. The most expensive drawing sold so far was "Reclining Female Nude Facing Left", which was made between 1914 and 1915 and sold in London in 2008 for Template:GBP. However, the majority of the art trade traditionally takes place privately through galleries such as Template:Interlanguage link, which specialise in the trade with original works by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and regularly present these at monographic exhibitions and international art fairs.

In 2006, the 1907 portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was purchased for the Neue Galerie New York by Ronald Lauder reportedly for US$135 million, surpassing Picasso's 1905 Boy With a Pipe (sold 5 May 2004 for $104 million), as the highest reported price ever paid for a painting at that time.

On 7 August 2006, Christie's auction house announced it was handling the sale of the remaining four works by Klimt that were recovered by Maria Altmann and her co-heirs after their long legal battle against Austria (see Republic of Austria v. Altmann). Altmann's fight to regain her family's paintings has been the subject of a number of documentary films, including Adele's Wish. Her struggle also became the subject of the dramatic film Woman in Gold, a movie inspired by Stealing Klimt, the documentary featuring Maria Altmann herself. The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II was sold at auction in November 2006 for $88 million, the third-highest-priced piece of art at auction at the time. The Apple Tree I (c. 1912) sold for $33 million, Birch Forest (1903) sold for $40.3 million,Template:Sfn and Houses in Unterach on Lake Atter (1916) sold for $31 million. Collectively, the five restituted paintings netted more than $327 million.Template:Sfn The painting Litzlberg am Attersee was auctioned for $40.4 million in November 2011.

Klimt's last painting, Lady with a Fan (Dame mit Fächer, 1918), was sold by Sotheby's in London on 27 June 2023 for UK£85.3M (US$108.4M) to a Hong Kong collector, the highest-priced artwork ever sold at auction in Europe.

In the early 2020s, Klimt's early portrait Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona (1897), depicting an Osu prince from what is now Ghana, resurfaced when a couple brought a dirty, poorly framed canvas bearing Klimt’s estate stamp to the Wienerroither & Kohlbacher gallery in Vienna, where it was authenticated by art historian Alfred Weidinger, author of the 2007 Klimt catalogue raisonné, as a long-lost work by the artist. The painting is believed to have remained in Klimt’s studio until it was consigned from his estate to the Samuel Kende auction house in Vienna in 1923 with a starting price of 15,000 crowns, and by 1928 it was recorded as the property of the Jewish collector Ernestine Klein, who, with her husband Felix, had converted Klimt’s former studio into a villa before the couple fled Nazi Austria in 1938, after which the work was long considered lost. Following a restitution settlement with Klein’s heirs, the cleaned and restored canvas was exhibited publicly at the TEFAF Maastricht art fair in March 2025 by Wienerroither & Kohlbacher with an asking price of €15 million (about US$16 million), and was widely discussed as an important link between Klimt’s early naturalistic portraits and his later decorative style. The portrait was painted after Klimt and his colleague Franz Matsch visited an 1897 Völkerschau (ethnographic “human zoo”) at Vienna’s Tiergarten am Schüttel, where Prince William Nii Nortey Dowuona was among some 120 members of the Osu community from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) displayed to large daily crowds, a context that has prompted renewed critical attention to colonial-era racial exhibitions in Europe. In November 2025, prosecutors in Vienna ordered the painting seized at the request of Hungarian authorities, who alleged that it had been improperly exported from Hungary, adding an ongoing legal dispute over export and restitution law to its provenance history.

On 18 November 2025, Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914–1916), a full-length portrait of the daughter of his patrons August and Serena Lederer, was sold at Sotheby’s in New York from the collection of cosmetics heir Leonard A. Lauder for US$236.4 million after an approximately 20-minute bidding contest among multiple telephone bidders, far exceeding its pre-sale estimate of US$150 million. The price set a new auction record for a work by Klimt, "a record for any work of art ever sold at Sotheby's", was reported as the highest price ever achieved for a work of modern art at auction, and made the painting the second most expensive artwork sold at auction, behind Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (2017).

In popular culture

In 1972 the Vienna State Opera presented a new production of Salome, an opera by Oscar Wilde and Richard Strauss, in a Klimt-inspired stage setting and costumes by Template:Interlanguage link. This production, directed by Boleslaw Barlog and first conducted by Karl Böhm, became extremely popular and stayed in the repertoire for nearly fifty years. It was shown in 265 performances and went on tour to Florence, Washington and twice in Japan.

In 2006 an Austrian art-house biographical film about Klimt's life, titled Klimt, was released with John Malkovich in the lead role. The 2015 film Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren as Maria Altmann, dramatised the legal battle to reclaim Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and four other paintings by Klimt that had been looted by the Nazis.

In 2008, fashion designer John Galliano cited Klimt as one of his inspirations for the Christian Dior Spring–Summer 2008 haute couture collection, alongside John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X. The 2013 collection of designer Alexander McQueen was also partially inspired by Klimt.

Gustav Klimt and his work have been the subjects of many collector coins and medals, such as the 100 Euro Painting Gold Coin, issued on 5 November 2003, by the Austrian Mint. The obverse depicts Klimt in his studio with two unfinished paintings on easels.

Tawny Chatmon, an American photographic artist known for her portraits of Black children overlaid with gold leaf and paint, has sought to place Black figures in glittering gold clothing inspired by Klimt's lavish portraits of white Viennese women. Elements of the portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, by Amy Sherald in 2018, have been noted by art critics to have been influenced by Klimt, in particular Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. One commentator noted the similarity to fashion designed by Klimt's muse Emilie Louise Flöge.

Commemoration of the 150th anniversary of birth

File:Klimt-Villa 2013 Atelier 02.jpg

Klimt's reconstructed studio (2013) at the Klimt Villa. On display are copies of the paintings Woman with Fan and The Bride (both c. 1917–18)

In 2012, Vienna marked the 150th anniversary of Gustav Klimt’s birth with a city-wide programme of exhibitions across at least ten venues, including major retrospectives at the Wien Museum, the Albertina, and the Leopold Museum. Other institutions such as the Belvedere, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Secession, Theatermuseum, MAK, and Künstlerhaus staged special displays ranging from comprehensive surveys of his paintings and drawings to focused presentations of his collaborations and early commissions. The anniversary year also saw the restoration and public opening of Klimt’s last studio in Vienna and the inauguration of the Template:Interlanguage link at the Attersee, a new centre offering exhibitions, conferences, and guided tours related to the artist. The Neue Galerie New York also held a "150th Anniversary Celebration" exhibition from May to August 2012, featuring paintings, drawings and rare photographs.

The Austrian Mint began a five-coin gold series called Klimt and His Women to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Klimt's birth. The first 50 Euro gold coin was issued on 25 January 2012 and featured a portrait of Klimt on the obverse and a portion of his painting Adele Bloch-Bauer I. The 2013 issue, depicting details of the Stoclet Frieze, was awarded the 2015 Coin of the Year award. The series concluded in 2016 featuring Klimt's most famous work, The Kiss.

To mark Klimt’s 150th birthday, Austria issued a commemorative stamp on 14 July 2012, while San Marino released a souvenir sheet of stamps with a print run of 70,000.

Google commemorated Klimt's 150th birthday on 14 July 2012 with a Google Doodle depicting his painting The Kiss.

Gustav Klimt Foundation

In 2013, the Gustav Klimt Foundation was set up by Ursula Ucicky, widow of Klimt's illegitimate son Gustav Ucicky, with a mission to "preserve and disseminate Gustav Klimt's legacy." The managing director of the Leopold Museum, Peter Weinhäupl, was appointed as chairman of the foundation. As a reaction, the museum's director Tobias G. Natter resigned in protest, citing Ucicky's past as a Nazi propaganda filmmaker.

Nazi-looted art: restitution and litigation

File:Gustav Klimt - Posthumous Portrait of Ria Munk III.jpg

Portrait of Ria Munk III (unfinished) (Template:Circa)

In 2000, a government committee recommended that Klimt's Lady with Hat and Feather Boa, in Belvedere Museum in Vienna, be restituted to the heirs of the Jewish family that had owned it before the Nazi Anschluss.

National Public Radio reported on 17 January 2006 that "The Austrian National Gallery is being compelled by a national arbitration board to return five paintings by Gustav Klimt to a Los Angeles-based woman, the heir of a Jewish family that had its art stolen by the Nazis. The paintings are estimated to be worth at least $150 million." This incident, involving Maria Altmann, was subsequently made into the Hollywood movie Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren. Later that year, the most notable of the five paintings, 1907's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (also known as "The Woman in Gold"), was sold at auction for $135 million (at the time, the highest price ever paid for a single painting). The winning bidder was art collector Ronald S. Lauder, founder of Neue Galerie in New York, where it remains on display.

In 2009 the Lentos Art Museum in Linz, Austria restituted Klimt's Portrait of Ria Munk III (Frauenbildnis) to the heirs of Aranka Munk, a Jewish art collector in Vienna who was murdered in the Holocaust. The looted portrait was of her daughter.

In 2021 the French minister of culture announced that the only Klimt in France's national collections was Nazi loot which should be restituted to the heirs of the Jewish family that had been persecuted by Nazis. Rosebushes Under the Trees, painted in 1905, had been owned by Nora Stiasi, who had been forced to sell it before being murdered by the Nazis. It is currently hanging in France's Orsay Museum which purchased it from Swiss art dealer Peter Nathan in 1980. A similar painting by Klimt known as Apple Trees II, which was also Nazi loot, was mistakenly returned to the wrong family by the Austrian authorities, and subsequently sold. Template:As of, its ownership was still in dispute.Template:Update-inline

In 2023, Ronald S. Lauder agreed to restitute and repurchase Klimt's The Black Feather Hat, which had belonged to Irene Beran, before she fled the Nazis. The painting's provenance was unclear after it left Beran's collection, resurfacing in Stuttgart in connection to the Nazi Friedrich Welz. Beran's mother and former husband Philip were murdered by the Nazis after being deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.Template:Dead link

Other Klimts that have been the object of ownership battles owing to a history of Nazi looting include the Beethoven Frieze, Water Snakes II, Blooming Meadow and Portrait of Gertrude Lowe.

See also

• Bride of the Wind (biopic)
• Japonisme
• Klimt (film)
• Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings
• Klimt Villa
• List of Austrian artists and architects
• List of claims for restitution for Nazi-looted art
• List of paintings by Gustav Klimt
• Lost artworks
• Secession Building
• Stoclet Frieze

Bibliography

• Tobias G. Natter, Max Hollein (Eds.): Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter, DelMonico Books – Prestel Publishing, Munich 2017, Template:ISBN.
• Tobias G. Natter (Ed.): Gustav Klimt: The Complete Paintings, Taschen, Cologne 2012, Template:ISBN.
• O'Connor, Anne-Marie (2012). The Lady in Gold, The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, Template:ISBN.
• Tobias G. Natter, Christoph Grunenberg (Eds.):Gustav Klimt. Painting, Design and Modern Life, Tate Publishing, London 2008, Template:ISBN.
• Salfellner, Harald (2018), Klimt. An Illustrated Life.
• The Belvedere Vienna & The Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (editors) (2023), Klimt. Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse.... Hirmer. Template:ISBN.

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Further reading

• Kallir, Jane, Alfred Weidinger: Gustav Klimt. In Search of the Total Artwork. Prestel, New York 2009, Template:ISBN
• Kränsel, Nina: Gustav Klimt. Prestel, 2007, Template:ISBN
• Weidinger, Alfred. Klimt. Catalogue Raisonné, Prestel, New York, 2007, Template:ISBN
• Czernin, Hubertus: Die Fälschung: Der Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2006. Template:ISBN
• Tobias G. Natter, Max Hollein (Eds.): The Naked Truth: Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and other Scandals, Prestel, Munich, 2005, Template:ISBN.
• Tobias G. Natter: Die Welt von Klimt, Schiele und Kokoschka. Sammler und Mäzene, DuMont, Cologne 2003, Template:ISBN.
• Schorske, Carl E. "Gustav Klimt: Painting and the Crisis of the Liberal Ego" in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. Vintage Books, 1981. Template:ISBN

External links

• Adele's Wish Documentary film on the Bloch-Bauer court case (Republic of Austria v. Altmann)
• The Bloch-Bauer court case
• Klimt's Last Retrospective by Monica Strauss
• Template:Trim/ Template:Trim at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidataTemplate:WikidataCheck
• "This Kiss to the Whole World" Klimt and the Vienna Secession (NYARC)
• Klimt, The Life and Work of Gustav Klimt
• Klimt vs. Klimt: Google's Pocket Gallery, including three paintings colorised by AI, cf. A.I. Digitally Resurrects Trio of Lost Gustav Klimt Paintings
• KLIMT LANDSCAPES, Exhibition at the Neue Galerie New York, 15 February – 6 May 2024.