| Gustav Klimt Biography
Who2 Biography:Gustav Klimt, Artist
- Born: 14 July 1862
- Birthplace: Vienna, Austria (then Austria-Hungary)
-
Died: 6 February 1918
- Best Known As: The Viennese painter of 1908's The Kiss
Artist Gustav Klimt, like composerGustav Mahler, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and big-time thinker Sigmund Freud,
was a hotshot of Vienna's glory days as it ushered in the 20th century.
Influenced by Impressionism, Symbolism and Art Nouveau, Klimt founded
the Vienna Secession (1898), an avant-garde art movement that included a
broad base of artisans and craftsmen as well as painters. Klimt himself
was known more for elaborate graphic schemes than "painterly" work --
his most famous piece, The Kiss (1908), shows his distinctive
gold-encrusted decorations over a semi-realistic portrait of an
embracing couple. He used the framework of myth and allegory and he
painted women, in ornate portraits and erotic exposures that were
scandalous by Victorian-era
standards. He also had time for more than painting -- after his death
he was credited with as many as 14 illegitimate children. A big
influence on the decorative arts in Austria, his most famous paintings
include Salome (1901, also known as Judith and the Head of Holofernes) Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907, also known as Golden Adele) and Hygeia (1907, detail from Medicine).
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:Gustav
Klimt
(born July 14, 1862, Vienna, Austria — died Feb. 6, 1918,
Vienna) Austrian painter. In 1897, after a period as an academic
muralist, his mature style emerged. Revolting against academic art in
favour of a decorative style similar to Art Nouveau, he founded the Vienna Sezession. His most successful works include The Kiss
(1908) and a series of portraits of fashionable Vienna matrons. In
these works he treated the human figure without shadow, conveying the
sensuality of skin by surrounding it with areas of flat, highly
ornamental areas of decoration. His later murals are characterized by
precisely linear drawing and flat, decorative patterns of colour and
gold leaf. He greatly influenced Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. See also Jugendstil.
For more information on Gustav Klimt, visit Britannica.com. Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), a controversial painter,
especially in his home city of Vienna, became the outstanding artist of
the Austrian "Stilkunstat" the turn of the century. Born in 1862 the son of an engraver,
Klimt attended the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in
Vienna for seven years starting in 1876. In 1879 he formed with his
brother Ernst and a co-student, Franz Matsch (1861-1942), a studio where
they executed designs primarily of other artists - for instance, the graffiti
designs of Laufberger for the Art Historical Museum and for Hans Makart
(1840-1884). In 1886 their own designs for the decorations of the
staircases for the Burgtheater
were given a prize, and in 1890 Klimt received the Emperor's Prize for
painting. In 1892 his brother Ernst died. In 1893 Klimt was nominated
for professor at the Vienna Academy but was rejected. In 1894 he
obtained the commission to paint the wall decorations for the great hall
of the University of Vienna and at the same time left Franz Matsch. In
1897 a group of Viennese artists formed the "Secession" as an
exhibition association to promote the modern arts, and Gustav Klimt was
elected its first president. The first exhibition in the following year
included works not only of its members but also French (Carriere, Mucha,
Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin), Swiss (Arnold Boecklin), and
Belgian (Khnopff, Meunier) artists who were considered ultra modern. The
exhibition caused heated controversy. In the same year the group began
to publish the journal Ver Sacrum ("The Holy Spring"), which became the outstanding publication of the Viennese Stilkunst, as this variation of the "Art Nouveau" of France and the "Jugendstil" of Germany was called. Later exhibitions, as the one in 1899 with Max Klinger's "Christus im Olymp" and the 1900 exhibition of Japanese art, became the center of discussions concerning modern art in Vienna. In
1900 professors at the university protested Klimt's painting
"Philosophy," which was the first of the wall paintings for the great
hall of the university. The Ministry of Education disregarded this
protest, while the painting received the medal of honor at the Paris
World Exhibition of the same year. When Klimt exhibited the second of
his wall paintings, "Medicin," in 1901, protests grew even louder. The
issue of Ver Sacrum which contained sketches for this painting
was confiscated (a short while later the order was rescinded) and a
parliamentary discussion began, but the Ministry of Education did not
cancel the commission. The Secession exhibition of 1902 made Max Klinger's "Beethoven" sculpture the centerpiece, and Klimt painted a frieze
for one of the side entrance halls which was a reference to Schiller's
"Ode to Joy." This frieze, as well as other works in the exhibit, caused
a scandal and an even greater division between those who considered
Klimt a great artist and those who rejected his works. While still
working on the university paintings, Klimt travelled to Ravenna, and the
influence of this trip can be seen in many of his later works. In
1903 the famous "Wiener Werkstaetten" was founded, an artist
association dedicated to transforming even everyday objects into works
of art, thus making the Austrian Stilkunst an all-embracing design
concept. Klimt showed 80 works in a retrospective exhibit in the
Secession and at the same time received the commission for the mosaic
frieze for the Palais Stoclet in Brussels. The third of the university
paintings, "Jurisprudence," encountered even greater protests than the
two previous ones, and in 1905 Klimt withdrew these works and repaid the
Ministry of Culture all advance payments. At the same time he was again
refused appointment as professor at the academy. By then he had become the most famous portraitist
for the wealthy Viennese society, creating icons of beautiful women in
which ornamental design and pure elegance dominated. His landscapes have
the same jewel-like quality, emphasizing the full bloom of summer. His
drawings, primarily of female nudes, are extraordinary in their
sensitive realism and their strong eroticism.
In 1907 he painted what is probably his most famous work, "The Kiss"
(Austrian Gallery in Vienna), and in 1908 he completed the
Stoclet-frieze; the palace for which the "Wiener Werkstaetten" designed
the furniture is one of the famous attempts to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, a complete work of art, in which all the parts blend into a true unit. By
this time Klimt had become one of Europe's famous artists, with
successful exhibits in Rome, Brussels, London, and Madrid. He was made
an honorary member of the Academy of Munich, and when again he was not
appointed professor the Vienna Academy elected him an honorary member.
But the controversy in Vienna did not end: the famous architect Adolph
Loos wrote his important article "Ornament and Crime" against the
aesthetic refinement of the everyday; the editor of the influential
journal Die Fackel, Karl Kraus, attacked Klimt's and the Wiener
Werkstaetten's refined aestheticism; and Emil Klaeger published a
graphic account of the misery, poverty, and rampant crime in the poorer districts of Vienna. The concept of the Stilkunst which had so strongly influenced Vienna's arts and life was under attack when Klimt died in 1918 in Vienna. Klimt's
combination of highly refined aesthetics, strong erotic tendencies,
jewel-like painting surfaces, and use of abstract ornaments made him the
outstanding example of Viennese Stilkunst. The French term "Fin de Siecle" (End of the Century), with its underlying nostalgia
as well as its refinement of the highest quality, its non-recognition
of the social problems of the times, and its implied self-indulgence,
fits well when applied to the works of Klimt. The artist himself,
however, was an athletic type with an enormous appetite, a health-conscious robust man who was generous to his models, to some of his fellow artists, and to the poor. Influences
in his works can be traced to symbolist artists like Minne, Khnopff,
Toorop, and even Boecklin, as well as to his confrontation with the
mosaics of Ravenna. Some of the influential writers of his time came to
his defense: Hermann Bahr and Ludwig Hevesi praised Klimt's
achievements, and the numerous portrait commissions testify that a
certain part of the Vienna society was entranced by the refined
decorative appeal of many of his works with their frequently mosaic-like
quality. The artist's diligence
- frequently working on a painting for months to achieve the quality he
demanded from himself - and his daring (one of his well-known paintings
translated the biblical "Judith" into an elegant Viennese society lady)
could not but arouse
strong opposition. While the university paintings (destroyed in World
War II) caused scandal because of the forms he chose to illustrate, the
intended allegories and the strong underlying eroticism in so many of
his works made Klimt the center of controversy. Some of his portraits
transformed the body of the model into a flat ornament where only face
and hands retained a three-dimensional likeness of the subject. Further Reading The
sumptuous work catalogue of Gustav Klimt was published by F. Novotny
and J. Dobai in 1967. Christian M. Nebehay published a well documented
biography in 1969, and Otto Breicha edited an important catalogue for a
comprehensive exhibit of Klimt's works with the title "Die Goldene Pforte"
("The Golden Gate") in 1978. Dover Publishers has issued a collection
of drawings, and Werner Hoffmann has edited a catalogue of the arts in
Vienna during Klimt's lifetime under the title Experiment Weltuntergang, Wien um 1900 (Experiment Apocalypse, Vienna around 1900). Additional Sources Whitford, Frank, Klimt, New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1990. |
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