![]() Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Cottage Garden with Sunflowers (c 1907), oil on canvas, 110 × 110 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria. The fine Divisionist marks of the ground alternate with patches of light, brilliant green foliage, and distant sky to give this painting a unique appearance and visual effect, something distinctive of Klimt. When he was on his summer holiday in 1902, he worked painstakingly to build contrasting patterns into Beech Forest I. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Beech Forest I (1902), oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, Galerie Neue Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden, Germany. He believed in the role of the decorative in art, and this and many of his portraits and other works combine representative passages with exuberant flights of pure decoration. His Portrait of Emilie Louise Flöge (1902) shows Klimt’s partner, a successful fashion designer in her own right. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Portrait of Emilie Louise Flöge (1902), oil on canvas, 181 × 84 cm, Museen der Stadt Wien, Vienna, Austria. Klimt leaves the ambiguity of her ecstasy, playing on the developing link between eroticism and death. In Judith I (1901), he portrays a woman of power, whose pleasure results from her successful manipulation of the enemy general, Holofernes, and her subsequent beheading of him, a popular theme in the art of women such as Artemisia Gentileschi. Wikimedia Commons.īack in Vienna, Klimt’s art centred on women, but unlike other artists of the day he is empowering rather than exploitative. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Judith I (1901), oil on canvas, 84 × 42 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria. The following year, he painted two remarkable studies of the texture and colour of the surface of the Attersee (1900), with unusual colour harmonies and painstakingly measured brushstrokes. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Attersee I (1900), oil on canvas, 80.2 x 80.2 cm, Die Sammlung Leopold, Vienna, Austria. One of the three landscapes he is believed to have painted in 1899 was this Tranquil Pond, with its closely observed reflections on the water surface. ![]() Unlike most tourists, though, Klimt didn’t go out and paint typical landscape views: he almost ignored the scenery around him, working instead on meticulously detailed depictions of the local countryside. Each summer, he stayed with his partner Emilie Flöge and her family, painting series of landscape works outdoors on uniform 110 cm (43 inches) square canvases. Klimt devoted his life to painting, working hard in his studio, and painting when he went on holiday. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Tranquil Pond (Egelsee near Golling, Salzburg) (1899), oil on canvas, 75.1 x 75.1 cm, Die Sammlung Leopold, Vienna, Austria. Despite her modern appearance, Klimt remains true to tradition by showing her attributes, including the aegis of Medusa’s head over her upper chest, a spear and helmet. This painting of Pallas Athena (1898) is one of his first incorporating gold. Klimt trained and worked not just as an artist, but as a craftsman too, and worked with other craftsmen to present his paintings in exactly the way that he envisaged. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Pallas Athena (1898), oil on canvas, 75 × 75 cm, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, Vienna, Austria. In 1905, following their dissent over artistic matters, Klimt and several others left the Secession. The Secession’s first president was Gustav Klimt, and its honorary president Rudolf von Alt. Although it started in the early 1890s, the Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 and held its first exhibition the following year. Several of its leading members were architects, and a few were sculptors. ![]() There is no such thing as a Vienna Secession style, but the members of the movement came together to provide an alternative to the Association of Austrian Artists, in their Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs (Union of Austrian Artists). This weekend I look at a small selection of paintings which show how diverse it was even in the graphic arts. ![]() The most influential and enduring of them all is that in Vienna, led by the painter Gustav Klimt, which has become synonymous with Art Nouveau, and extended to glasswork, ceramics, furniture and architecture. Later movements in Poland and elsewhere, although not termed secessions, followed suit. These started in Paris and Munich, and spread quickly to Berlin and Vienna. In these, substantial groups of artists working in a wide range of media rejected the conservative standards maintained by Academies and Salons. ![]() Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a wave of revolutions in art spread across Europe. ![]()
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