Gustav Klimt: 150th Anniversary Celebration

Throughout 2012, Austria is celebrating the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt with exhibitions devoted to his work. Several Viennese museums, including the Albertina, the Belvedere, the Kunsthistorisches, the Leopold, and the Wien Museum, are honoring different aspects of Klimt’s extraordinary legacy. The Neue Galerie is joining in these celebrations with a special summer 2012 installation of his work.

Gustav Klimt was born on July 14, 1862, on the outskirts of Vienna. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Vienna from 1876 to 1883. Gustav, his brother Ernst, and fellow painter Franz Matsch formed a loose association and they worked together in a historicist style until around 1892. In 1897, Klimt was named the first president of the Vienna Secession, and he quickly established important patrons among the leading art collectors in Vienna. The latter part of his career was devoted primarily to portrait commissions and landscapes, both of which received great acclaim. Klimt died on February 6, 1918.

“Gustav Klimt: 150th Anniversary Celebration” includes major paintings from the collection: Pale Face (1903), Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), The Park of Schloss Kammer (ca. 1910), Forester House in Weissenbach on the Attersee (1914), Forest Slope in Unterach on the Attersee (1916), and the late work, The Dancer (1916-18). The exhibition also features a number of rare and never-before-seen photographs of the artist and his close companion, the fashion designer Emilie Flöge.

The exhibition features a number of Klimt drawings, including a group of studies from two controversial projects: sketches made in preparation for three Faculty paintings that were to be installed in the Main Hall of the Vienna University (Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence, 1900-07), and some of his sketches for the Beethoven Frieze, shown at the Fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition in 1902. Both provoked scandals and left Klimt disillusioned with government projects. Following these events, Klimt undertook mostly private portrait commissions of society women in Vienna.

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The Book Store offers a range of books on the artist.

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Hear curatorial insights on key works in the exhibition.

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The Neue Galerie's Design Shop many Klimt-inspired products, including gold and silver cufflinks designed by Josef Hoffmann for Gustav Klimt, produced exclusively for the Neue Galerie by First Edition.