gustav klimt

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 $29,128,000, [27] 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 watercolors. [28] 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 GB£505,250 . [29] However, the majority of the art trade traditionally takes place privately [30] through galleries such as Wienerroither & Kohlbacher, which specialize in the trade with original works by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and regularly present these at monographic exhibitions and international art fairs. [31] [32]

1. Allegorical (which included multicolored prints of The Golden Knight, 1903 and The Virgin, c. 1912)
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)

All art is erotic. ” – Gustav Klimt

Due to the disgrace, and disdain of locals, Gustav Klimt feels that his work and popularity are taking a turn for the worst; it is in 1897 that he begins the Secession Movement. This movement takes focus on young artists, in an attempt to expose their work, and help bring foreign art forms to the Vienna based magazines. In 1898, the movement has its first organized exhibit, which draws in a very large showing, of about 57,000 visitors. From this period, to about 1905, Gustav Klimt was a central force and leader of this movement; in fact, during this decade, it was the most popular, and most well known art movement in Vienna.

The haziness evokes the contemporaneous exploration of dreams by Sigmund Freud, whose seminal work on the subject would be published in Vienna just two years later. It is tempting to read Klimt’s painting in the context of Freud’s view of dreams as the fulfillment of wishes, which might suggest that the powerful, imperious woman is the object of male desire, but also potentially that the traditional feminine persona must be costumed in order to attain such powerful status.
When word of this commission was leaked to the public, many people begged Klimt to insert their portraits, however small, into the picture through special sittings with the artist, as being immortalized on canvas as a regular attendee at the Burgtheater constituted a tangible emblem of one’s social status. As a result, the painting serves not only as a valuable record of the theater’s architecture, but also essentially as a catalog of the city’s political, cultural, and economic elites – over 150 individuals in all. Among the audience members are Austria’s Prime Minister; Vienna’s Mayor; the surgeon Theodor Billroth; the composer Johannes Brahms; and the Emperor’s mistress, the actress Katherina Schratt. Though the subject is appropriate for a history painting, its dimensions (the width, its longest side, measures less than 37 inches) are diminutive, making the precision of Klimt’s individual portraits all the more impressive. Critics at the time agreed, as Klimt was awarded the coveted Emperor’s Prize in 1890 for this painting, which significantly raised his profile within the Viennese art community, and a flurry of other important public commissions for buildings on the Ringstrasse soon followed.

Oil on canvas – Destroyed in 1945
This detail from Medicine shows the figure of Hygeia, the mythological daughter of the god of medicine, who was located at the bottom center of the canvas and identified by an accompanying snake and the cup of Lethe. Above Hygeia rose a tall column of light, to the right of which rose a web of nude figures intertwined with the skeleton of Death. To the other side of the light column floated a nude female whose pelvis was thrust forward, while below her feet floated an infant (to whom she might have just given birth) wrapped in a swath of tulle. The imagery provoked a storm of criticism on two levels. First, faculty and Ministry officials charged that it was pornographic, particularly the female with the thrusting pelvis – thereby demonstrating the stodginess of Vienna’s cultural community. Second – perhaps a more valid argument – the painting did nothing to illustrate the themes of medicine, either as a preventative or healing tool. The acrimonious response to Klimt’s works eventually prompted him, in 1905, to buy back the three works for 30,000 crowns with the help of his patron August Lederer, who received Philosophy in return.

After studying at the Vienna School of Decorative Arts, Klimt in 1883 opened an independent studio specializing in the execution of mural paintings. His early work had a classical style that was typical of late 19th-century academic painting, as can be seen in his murals for the Vienna Burgtheater (1888) and on the staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
Gustav Klimt, (born July 14, 1862, Vienna, Austria—died February 6, 1918, Vienna), Austrian painter, founder of the school of painting known as the Vienna Sezession.

References:

http://www.gustav-klimt.com/
http://m.theartstory.org/artist/klimt-gustav/
http://m.theartstory.org/artist/klimt-gustav/artworks/
http://www.britannica.com/biography/Gustav-Klimt
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/art/all/44819/facts.gustav_klimt_complete_paintings.htm