Gustav Klimt Posters Prints Fine Art

Tree of Life Stoclet Frieze

Tree of Life Stoclet Frieze

Hygieia detail from Medicine

Mother and Child Three Ages of Woman

Three Ages of Woman

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Kiss Art Print

Kiss Art Print

Musique Art Print

Forest of Beeches

Fulfillment Stoclet Frieze

Fulfillment Stoclet Frieze

Goldfish Art Print

Goldfish detail Art Print

Flower Garden Art Print

As a result of Klimt's burgeoning artistic skill, he was enrolled at the age of fourteen in the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts in 1876. He pursued his studies there until 1883, and received formal training as an architectural painter. He was a superior draughtsman as demonstrated by his early studies of nudes. He idolized the leading history painter of the era, Hans Makart, whose great Rubinesque paintings were cryptic, theatrical, and morally intoxicating. Contrary to other young artists, Klimt recognized the precepts of conservative Academic training. In 1877 his brother Ernst, who, similar to his father before him, would follow a career as an engraver and also enrolled in the school.

The two brothers and their friend Franz Matsch started working collectively and by 1880 the three had received numerous commissions as a team. They began to name themselves the "Company of Artists". Klimt started his professional career painting interior murals and ceilings in extensive public buildings on the Ringstrae which was to include the successful series of Allegories and Emblems.

Life and Death Tod Und Leben Giclee

Water Serpents II Art Print

Water Serpents II Art Print

Virgin Poster

Die Tanzerin Art Print

Donna con Ventaglio

Silhouette II Serigraph

Silhouette I Serigraph

Farm Garden with Sunflowers

Judith II Art Print

Judith Art Print

Field of Poppies

Die Jungfrau Art Print

Emilie Floege

Danae Art Print

In 1888 Klimt accepted the Golden order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria for his contributions to the current art world. He also was named an honorary member of the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. The three artists together were drawing attention for their high quality work produced with exceptional speed, but tragedy struck and in 1892 both Klimt's father and brother Ernst died. Gustav then had to assume financial obligation for his both father's and brother's families. The tragedies impacted his artistic vision also, and soon he began trend away from the formal toward a new individualized style. It was in the early 1890s that Klimt was introduced to Emilie Flöge, who, not withstanding the artist's relationships with other women, was to become his steady companion until the end of his life. Whether his relationship with Flöge was sexual or not is the subject of debate but during that period Klimt is known to have fathered at least fourteen children.

Klimt was one of the establishing members and president of the renowned Wiener Sezession, also termed the Vienna Secession in 1897, and of the group's periodical Sacred Spring. He stayed with the Secession until 1908. The group set their goals to allow for exhibitions for alternative young artists, to bring the best foreign artists works to the city of Vienna, and to release its own magazine to show case members work. The group announced no manifesto and did not arrange out to promote any specific style. Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolist each coexisted together. The government even supported their efforts and gave them a charter on public land to erect an exhibition hall. The group's symbol was Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of just causes, wisdom, and the arts. Klimt would paint his revolutionary version of the goddess in 1898.

Starting out in the late 1890s Klimt began to take annual holidays during summer months with the Flöge family, vacationing on the shores of Attersee. Here he painted several of his landscapes works. These works comprise the only genre apart from the figure that earnestly interested Klimt, and are numerous enough and of given quality to deserve a independent admiration. Formally, the landscapes are defined by the same nuance of design and emphasized patterning as the figural pieces. Deep space in the Attersee works is so expeditiously flattened to a single plane, it is conceivable Klimt painted them when looking through a telescope.

In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to produce three paintings to adorn the ceiling of the Great Hall in the University of Vienna. Not finished until the turn of the century, his three paintings symbolizing Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence were criticized for their revolutionary themes and what was considered pornographic matters. Klimt had metamorphosed conventional allegory and symbolism into a new nomenclature which was perceived as overtly sexual and therefore more distressing. The public backlash came from all quarters - political, aesthetically and religious. As a consequence, they were not exhibited on the ceiling of the Great Hall. This would be the final public commission accepted by Klimt. All three paintings were finally destroyed by receding SS forces in May 1945. His Nuda Verita characterized his play to further agitate the establishment. The starkly naked red headed woman clasps the mirror of truth, while higher up it is a quote by Schiller in stylized lettering, "If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad."

In 1902 Klimt completed the Beethoven Frieze for the 14th Vienna Secessionist exhibition which was meant to be a jubilation of the composer and boasted a monolithic, polychromed sculpture by Max Klinger. Intended for the exhibition only, the frieze was painted directly on the walls with light materials. After the exhibition the painting was saved, though it did not go on display until 1986.

Gustav Klimt's Golden Phase era of his artistic career was met with positive critical response and success. Several of his works from this period applied gold leaf. His prominent use of gold can first be noted in Pallas Athene, done in1898 and Judith I from1901. Commonly the works more popularly associated with this time period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907 - 1908). Klimt journeyed little but took trips to both Venice and Ravenna. Both cities are famous for their exquisite mosaics, and these mosaics are thought to have instigated Klimt's gold technique and his Byzantine imagery. In 1904, he joined forces with other artists on the lush Palais Stoclet, the household of a affluent Belgian industrialist, which was one of the most impressive monuments of the Art Nouveau age. Klimt's contributions added to to the dining area, included both Fulfillment and Expectation, and considered some of his finest ornamental work. Klimt himself publicly expressed, "probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament." Between the years 1907 and 1909, Klimt painted five canvases of society women clothed in fur. His evident love of costume is conveyed in the many photos of Floge modeling clothing he designed.
Klimt himself ordinarily wore sandals and a long robe with nothing underneath while working and relaxing around his own home. His uncomplicated life was reasonably secluded, committed to his art and family and little else with the exception of the Secessionist Movement. He avoided cafe society and fellow artists socially. Klimt's popularity typically brought patrons to his door therefore he could afford to be extremely exclusive. His painting technique was very careful and scrupulous at times and he needed prolonged sittings from his subjects. Though very active sexually, he kept his affairs prudent and he averted personal scandal. Like Rodin, Klimt also applied mythology and allegory to lightly disguise his extremely erotic nature. Danae is an example of this. His drawings frequently reveal strictly sexual interest in women as objects. His models were habitually accessible to him to pose in any erotic manner that pleased him. Several of the models were prostitutes also. All the same, his handling of women in his paintings oftentimes goes beyond the erotic poses of submissive women to display the higher power that women hold over the destiny of men, from birth to death.

Klimt penned little about his imagination or this techniques. He composed mostly postcards to Flöge and kept no diary. In a uncommon writing called "Commentary on a non-existent self-portrait", he claims "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...Who ever wants to know something about me...ought to look carefully at my pictures."

In 1911 his painting Death and Life received the distinguished first prize in the world exhibitions held in Rome, Italy. In 1915 his mother Anna passed away. Gustav Klimt passed three years after in Vienna on February 6, 1918, after suffering both a stroke and pneumonia. He was entombed at the Hietzing Cemetery, Vienna. Numerous paintings were left incomplete.

• University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings
  
• Palais Stoclet mosaic in Brussels
  
• able (1883)
  
• The Theatre in Taormina (1886-1888)
  
• Auditorium in the Old Burgtheater, Vienna (1888)
  
• Portrait of Joseph Pembauer, the Pianist and Piano Teacher (1890)
  
• Ancient Greece II - Girl from Tanagra (1890 - 1891)
  
• Portrait of a Lady (1894)
  
• Music I (1895)
  
• Love (1895)
  
• Sculpture (1896)
  
• Tragedy (1897)
  
• Music II (1898)
  
• Pallas Athene (1898)
  
• Flowing Water (1898)
  
• Portrait of Sonja Knips (1898)
  
• Fish Blood (1898)
  
• Schubert at the Piano (1899)
  
• After the Rain - Garden with Chickens in St Agatha (1899)
  
• Nymphs (Silver Fish) (1899)
  
• Mermaids (1899)
  
• Philosophy (1899-1907)
  
• Nuda Veritas (1899)
  
• Portrait of Serena Lederer (1899)
  
• Medicine (Hygieia) (1900-1907)
  
• Music (Lithograph) (1901)
  
• Judith I (1901)
  
• Buchenwald (Birkenwald) (1901)
  
• Gold Fish - To my Critics (1901-1902)
  
• Portrait of Gertha Felsovanyi (1902)
  
• Portrait of Emilie Floge (1902)
  
• Beech Forest (1902)
  
• Beech Forest I (1902)
  
• Beethoven Frieze (1902)
  
• Beech woods (1903)
  
• Hope (1903)
  
• Pear Tree (1903)
  
• Jurisprudence (1903-1907)
  
• Water Serpents I (1904-1907)
  
• Water Serpents II (1904-1907)
  
• The Three Ages of Woman (1905)
  
• Portrait of Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1905)
  
• Farm Garden - Flower Garden (1905-1906)
  
• Farm Garden with Sunflowers (1905-1906)
  
• The Stoclet Frieze (1905-1909)
  
• Portrait of Fritsa Reidler (1906)
  
• Sunflower (1906-1907)
  
• Hope II (1907-1908)
  
• Danaë (1907)
  
• Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)
  
• Poppy Field (1907)
  
• Schloss Kammer on the Attersee I (1908)
  
• The Kiss (1907 - 1908)
  
• Lady with Hat and Feather Boa (1909)
  
• The Tree of Life (1909)
  
• Judith II (Salomé) (1909)
  
• Black Feather Hat - Lady with Feather Hat (1910)
  
• Schloss Kammer on the Attersee III (1910)
  
• The Park (1910)
  
• Death and Life (1911)
  
• Farm Garden with Crucifix (1911-1912)
  
• Apple Tree (1912)
  
• Forester's House, Weissenbach on Lake Attersee (1912)
  
• Portrait of Mada Primavesi (1912)
  
• Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)
  
• The Virgins (Die Jungfrau) (1913)
  
• The Church in Cassone (1913)
  
• Semi-nude seated, reclining (1913)
  
• Semi-nude seated, closed eyes (1913)
  
• Portrait of Eugenia Primavesi (1913-1914)
  
• Lovers (1914)
  
• Portrait of Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt (1914)
  Semi-nude lying down (1914-1915)
  
• Portrait of Friederike Maria Beer (1916)
  
• Houses in Unterach on the Attersee (1916)
  
• Death and Life (1916)
  
• Garden Path with Chickens (1916)
  
• The Girl-Friends (1916-1917)
  
• Woman seated, drawing (1916-1917)
  
• The Dancer (1916 - 1918)
  
• Leda, destroyed (1917)
  
• Portrait of a Lady, en face (1917-1918)
  
• The Bride (unfinished) (1917-1918)
  
• Adam and Eve, unfinished (1917-1918)
  
• Portrait of Johanna Staude, unfinished (1917-1918)

Klimt's paintings have fetched some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art. In November of 2003, Klimt's Landhaus am Attersee sold for $29,128,000, but that was soon overshadowed by prices spent for other Klimt works. In 2006 the his Apple Tree I (ca. 1912) sold for $33 million and Birch Forest (1903) sold for $40.3 million. Both works had been lately restituted to the heirs of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

Purchased for the Neue Galerie in New York by Ronald Lauder for a reported US $135 million, the 1907 portrait Adele Bloch-Bauer I which forced out Picasso's 1905 Boy With a Pipe that had been sold May 5, 2004 for $104 million. Previously Picasso had the highest reported price ever paid for a piece of art sold at a public auction in June, 2006. On August 7, 2006 Christie's auction house proclaimed it was handling the sale of the other works by Klimt that were retrieved by the Bloch-Bauer heirs following a long legal battle. Christies auctioned Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II in November 2006 for $88 million, marking it as the third-highest priced piece of art at auction at the time. Collectively the five restored paintings, including landscapes, netted over $327 million.