KeErah Hutchings

Gustav Klimt Biography/ report

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, Austria July 14th 1862. He is the second oldest of
seven siblings, three boy and four girls. Gustavs mother Anna Klimt was an unrealized musical
performer and his father Ernest Klimt the elder was an unsuccessful gold engraver. Because his
parents didnt make much money the family lived in poverty most of Klimts childhood. When
Gustav was fourteen he attended the Vienna school of arts and crafts, where he studied
architectural painting until 1883. Klimts early work was considered academic, he idolized
Viennas foremost history painter Hans Makart.

Gustavs brother Ernest also went to the Vienna school of arts to become an engraver.
While in school the two brothers and their friend Franz Matsch started to work together on
commissioned art and by 1880 they had received several commissions; they called themselves
the company of artists. Gustav continued to paint interior mural and ceilings in large public
building. This began his professional career including a successful series of Allegories and
Emblems.

In 1988 Klimt received the Golden Order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria
for the murals he painted in the Burgtheater in Vienna. He was also an honorary member of the
University of Munich and the University of Vienna. During the early 1890s Gustav met Emilie
Louise Flge who remained his companion till the end of his life even though he had

relationships with other women. It is not really confirmed whether or not they had a sexual
relationship, however Klimt fathered fourteen children during this time from different women.
When both his father and younger brother Ernest died in 1892 Gustav had to take care of his
mother and his brothers family financially. During this hard time full of tragedy Klimts artistic
vision changed to a new personal style that was less academic.

In 1897 Klimt joined the Vienna secession movement and became the president of the
movement. The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young
artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine
to showcase the work of members. The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to
encourage any particular style. They had Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists. They also had
support from the government that gave them a lease on public land to erect an exhibition hall.
The group used the symbol of Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the
arts. Klimt painted a radical version of her in 1898.

Klimt was commissioned to paint three paintings on the ceiling of the great hall of the
University of Vienna. The three paintings, were called Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence.
they were criticized for their radical themes and material, and were considered very
"pornographic", because of the way Klimt transformed traditional symbolism into a new
language that was more overtly sexual and considered more disturbing to some people; There
was public outcry from political, aesthetic and religious groups the result caused the paintings
to not be displayed and eventually destroyed in 1945. As a result these paintings were the last
public commission accepted by Klimt.

In 1899 he did a painting to show how he felt and shake up society further called Nuda
Veritas, a starkly naked red-headed woman that holds the mirror of truth, while above her was
a quotation by Friedrich Schiller in stylized lettering stating, "If you cannot please everyone with
your deeds and your art, please only a few. To please many is bad. Later during this period
around the late 1890s he took annual summer holidays with the Flge family on the shores of
Attersee and painted many of his landscapes there. These landscapes represent the only genre
aside from figure painting that seriously interested Klimt. In recognition of his passion, the
locals called him Waldschrat meaning "Forest demon. The landscapes are characterized by the
same refinement of design and clear patterning as the figural pieces. Deep space in the
Attersee works is flattened so efficiently to a single plane, that it is believed that Klimt painted
them by using a telescope.

In 1902, Klimt painted the Beethoven Frieze for the Fourteenth Vienna Secessionist
exhibition, which was intended to be a celebration of the composer Ludwig Van Beethoven and
featured a monumental polychrome sculpture by Max Klinger. It was intended for the
exhibition only, so he painted the frieze directly on the walls with light materials. After the
exhibition the painting was preserved, although it was not displayed again until 1986. The face
on the Beethoven portrait resembled the composer and Vienna Court Opera director Gustav
Mahler, a man Klimt had known and respected. Klimt left the Vienna Secession in 1908 and
evolved his style to look more like the Art Nouveau movement, it was inspired by natural forms
and structures, not only in flowers and plants, but also in curved lines.

From 1899 to 1910 was considered Klimts Golden Phase in reaction to the positive
feedback his painting got and the success he had during this period. It was called the golden
phase because during this period he used gold leaf a lot in his paintings whether it was in the
background or part of the cloths of the person he was painting. The works most popularly
associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907
08). During this time Klimt made a couple trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their
beautiful mosaics, which most likely inspired his gold technique and his Byzantine imagery. In
1904, he collaborated with other artists on the lavish Palais Stoclet, the home of a wealthy
Belgian industrialist that was one of the grandest monuments of the Art Nouveau age. Klimt's
contributions to the dining room, including both Fulfillment and Expectation, were some of his
finest decorative works, and as he publicly stated, "probably the ultimate stage of my
development of ornament. In 1905 he painted a portrait of Margarete Wittgenstein, Ludwig
Wittgenstein's sister, on the occasion of her marriage. Then, between 1907 and 1909, Klimt
painted five canvases of society women wrapped in fur. His apparent love of costume is
expressed in the many photographs of Flge modeling clothing he had designed.

Because of his success during this time he was able to work and relax in his home,
where he usually wore sandals and a long robe with no undergarments. His simple life was
somewhat secluded, devoted to his art and family. He avoided caf society and seldom
socialized with other artists. Klimt's fame usually brought patrons to his door and he could
afford to be highly selective. His painting method was very deliberate and painstaking at times
and he required lengthy sittings by his subjects. Even though he was sexually active, he kept his
affairs discreet and he avoided personal scandal.

Klimt wrote little about his vision or his methods. He wrote mostly postcards to Flge
and kept no diary. In a rare writing called "Commentary on a non-existent self-portrait", he
states, "I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a
painting than I am in other people, above all women...There is nothing special about me. I am a
painter who paints day after day from morning to night...Whoever wants to know something
about me... ought to look carefully at my pictures."

In 1911 his painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome.
Still not satisfied with the painting Klimt repainted the background from gold to bluish black. In
1915 his mother, Anna, died; And three years later Klimt died in Vienna on February 6, 1918,
having suffered a stroke and pneumonia due to the influenza epidemic of that year. He was
buried at the Hietzinger Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna. He left many paintings and drawing
unfinished.

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, but that sale was
soon eclipsed by prices paid for other paintings by Klimt. In 2006, the 1907 portrait, Adele
Bloch-Bauer I, was purchased for the Neue Galerie New York by Ronald Lauder reportedly for
US $135 million, surpassing Picasso's 1905 Boy With a Pipe (sold May 5, 2004 for $104 million),
as the highest reported price ever paid for a painting. The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II was
sold at auction in November 2006 for $88 million, the third-highest priced piece of art at
auction at the time. The Apple Tree I (ca. 1912) sold for $33 million, Birch Forest (1903) sold for
$40.3 million, and Houses in Unterach on Lake Atter (1916) sold for $31 million. Collectively, the

five restituted paintings netted more than $327 million. An Attersee painting received $40.4
million at Sotheby's in November 2011.

My thought of Gustav Klimt, the first time I heard of him was in a movie and one of the
characters favorite paintings was The Kiss and I absolutely fell in love with it. The gold color, the
way he places the figures especially how the man gently holds the woman and how Klimt paints
flowers around her head making her look like shes wearing a crown and how he decorates
both of their robes with circles and thin rectangles. When I looked up other paintings he had
done I found that I loved how he used the decorative designs on the dresses and the
backgrounds of his women portraits, even though there were a lot of flowers and designs it
never seemed like he was over doing it. I also love how he places the gold leaf on his paintings;
there is always the right amount of gold in each of his paintings no matter what hes doing
whether it is a landscape or a portrait of a woman. I didnt really like his nudity drawings and
paintings but I can see why other people would like them. I loved his other paintings that he
highly decorated like Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Portrait of Emilie Flge. It was also interesting to
see how he started out painting murals for museums with his classical style and then evolved to
paint women in new ways but still had designs that were taken from history like the Greek,
Egyptian, and Byzantine influence. I also like the way he painted Golden Apple Tree the gray and
black of the bark contrast nicely with the green leaves and the gold apples. I also like how he
drew the tree leaning to the side so he could paint the leaves and the apples easier instead of
having them go up like you normally see in trees. I found after researching Klimt more and
looking at his work that I can appreciate his style of painting even more than I had before and
see where some of his inspiration might have come from.