Gustav Klimt

b. 1862, Baumgartend. 1918, Vienna

Although much has been written about Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), he remains something of an enigma. The Austrian artist did not keep a diary nor did he offer remarks about his work. In an undated statement, he shared some insight into his philosophy: “I am convinced that I am not particularly interesting as a person. There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning until night…Whoever wants to know something about me…ought to look carefully at my pictures and try to see in them what I am and what I want to do.”

At the Neue Galerie, we look at Klimt’s paintings every day. An entire room at the museum is dedicated to his work; the Klimt Gallery on the second floor of the building always features an array of his paintings.

Gustav Klimt was born on July 14, 1862. His reputation rests upon his modernist work, completed from the founding of the Vienna Secession in 1897 until his death in 1918, and it belies his traditional academic training.

Born on the outskirts of Vienna, he was the second of seven children. Klimt showed artistic talent from a young age. He enrolled at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) when he was only fourteen years old. Prior to graduation in 1883, Klimt and his brother Ernst, along with fellow painter Franz Matsch, established a partnership, sometimes referred to as the Künstler-Compagnie (Artists’ Company) in the literature on Klimt. But the trio referred to themselves as the Atelier Gebrüder Klimt und Franz Matsch (Studio of the Klimt Brothers and Franz Matsch). They worked in the historicist style and garnered many lucrative commissions decorating theaters throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Klimt might have continued to pursue a conservative approach except for an unexpected turn of events. In 1892, both his father and his brother Ernst died, leaving Klimt financially responsible for two households.

After Ernst Klimt's death, the Künstler-Compagnie was disbanded. Although Klimt and Matsch were no longer business partners, they were jointly invited in 1894 to paint the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, highlighting specific faculties within the institution. Klimt was assigned Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence. Although he broke new ground with his radical interpretations of these subjects, his paintings were widely assailed by critics, who deemed them indecent and ugly for his realistic portrayals of aging and pregnant bodies. The nearly decade-long episode marked a fraught chapter in Klimt’s career. Ultimately, the project was never realized as envisioned. The paintings were destroyed along with other significant Klimt works in a fire at the end of World War II. All that remains are preliminary sketches and black-and-white photographs of the paintings themselves.

Concurrent with his work on the faculty paintings, Klimt and twenty other artists resigned from Vienna's leading artists’ organization in 1897 to found the Vienna Secession.

Soon, Klimt shifted focus to portraiture, primarily of women who moved in Vienna’s artistic and cultural elite circles. In 1907, the year of its completion, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was publicly unveiled at Mannheim's “Internationale Kunstausstellung” (International Art Show), and shown in Vienna for the first time at the 1908 “Kunstschau” (Art Show). Recognized as an icon in the canon of art history, it is emblematic of Klimt's short-lived “golden style” of painting.

Klimt explored a vast range of portrait styles. The Black Feathered Hat (1910) shows Klimt’s careful study of the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The late unfinished painting, The Dancer (1916-17) offers insight into Klimt’s working method. He initially sketched a charcoal outline of the composition onto the primed canvas, then painstakingly filled in the details with oil, initially focusing on the subject's face.

Although Klimt never married, he enjoyed discreet affairs with numerous models. He was also involved in a long, most likely platonic relationship with his sister-in-law, Emilie Flöge, who managed the Schwestern Flöge (Flöge Sisters) fashion salon alongside her sisters. Klimt and Flöge's initial contact was flirtatious, but the infatuation developed into a deep friendship. They shared artistic interests and clients, and they cherished the time they spent together on the annual summer family holiday.

After he began spending his summer holidays with the Flöge family in the lake region of Austria around the Attersee, Klimt found fulfillment in the landscape genre. Between 1900 and 1903, Klimt painted two pictures of a prominent poplar tree that stood adjacent to the Seehof Chapel near Litzlberg on the Attersee. The earliest of the two canvases is often displayed at the Neue Galerie. Here, Klimt shows a vibrant sunny afternoon with stands of flowering fruit trees planted amidst a field of wildflowers. The sky is largely obscured by dense cloud cover, yet specks of blue sky peak through, capturing the transient qualities of a late summer day.

Allegories became another avenue of exploration, and they offered Klimt the opportunity to address existential themes, such as life and death. His interest in such pictures is linked to his new role as father to a handful of illegitimate children. Hope II (1907–08) is a potent example of Klimt’s fascination with the genre. Here, a pregnant woman bows her head, perhaps to pray for the safe delivery of her child. The three women at her feet join her in this solemn gesture. However, the specter of death appears menacingly beside her belly, underscoring both the dangers of childbirth and the life cycle itself.

Klimt himself fell victim to health problems at the age of 55. In early January 1918, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He was admitted to the hospital, where he died on February 6. Klimt's premature death sent shock waves throughout the Viennese community.