Gustav Klimt - Painter of Women!

Gustav Klimt - Painter of Women

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was born in Vienna as the second child of Ernst and Anna Klimt. At the age of 15, he entered the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule (1876-83). He was supposed to become a drawing teacher, but professor Ferdinand Laufberger recognized his talent. Klimt was influenced by Hans Makart and his teacher Julius Viktor Berger. In his early work from 1883 to 1892, Klimt was closely associated with his brother Ernst and with Franz Matsch. They created stage curtains, decorative wall and ceiling paintings, e.g. for the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. In 1893, Klimt began to work on his own. In 1897, Klimt was a cofounder and the first president of the "Vereinigung bildender Künstler Österreichs - Secession". Before the turn of the century, Klimt began to develop his distinctive neo-impressionist style. In 1899, he began to spend his summer holidays at lake Attersee every year, where he painted his most important sceneries. Around 1900, with his ornamented portraits of women, Klimt created a new type of picture. Women occupied the central place in his art. His portraits range from historicizing, to allegoric, mythological, erotic and classic. As with Judith I (see photograph below), women became icons. In 1900, a conflict about his works created for the University of Vienna made him largely leave the stage of public life and seek private customers. In 1907, the young Egon Schiele visited him for the first time in his atelier. A year later, Klimt held his protecting hands over Oskar Kokoschka and the expressionists, as, for the first time, they showed their works in Vienna. Klimt's late work showed abstract and expressionist elements. He died on February 6, 1918, at the age of 56.

The exhibition "Klimt und die Frauen" (Klimt - Painter of Women) at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna is a huge success with over 120,000 visitors until today. The museum hosts the world's largest collection of Klimt paintings, but the last special exhibition of the painter's work at the Belvedere dates back to his 100th birthday in 1962. In the mid-1980s, at the exhibition "Dream and Reality" at the Wiener Künstlerhaus, Klimt's paintings were for the last time presented in a special exhibition to the public in Vienna. The permanent collection was of course always accessible and the Belvedere generously lent its Klimt's to important exhibitions around the world, such as in Zurich in 1992, in Tokyo in 1996 and in Milan in 1999. "Klimt und die Frauen" presents the first virtually complete overview of Klimt's female portraits.

At the center of the exhibition is the painter's probably most important and best-known work group, the portraits of women. It is complemented by allegoric paintings such Judith I and II, The Kiss or Water Snake. Among over 100 exhibited paintings and sketches are also works of European and American precursors and contemporaries of Gustav Klimt such as Ferdinand Hodler, Edouard Manet, Edvard Munch, James McNeill-Whistler and John Singer-Sargent. Last but not least, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna lent the portrait of the Infant Maria Teresa by Diego Velazquez to the Belvedere. Klimt used it as a model for his portrait of Fritza Riedler (the wife of a university professor in Berlin). In Vienna, Klimt is presented in his (art) historic context.

"Klimt und die Frauen" goes beyond a classical art exhibition and tries to give answers about the personal life and social status of the women Klimt portrayed. At the turn of the century with the "emergence of modernity", fundamental social change gave women a new position in society, culture and ideology. The exhibition also focuses on the influence of the haute bourgeoisie, the so-called "Ringenstrassengesellschaft", named after Vienna's most famous street, on art. Their patronage became vital to the art scene. The myth and ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) is another aspect of the exhibition. A symposium as well as a series of lectures accompany "Klimt und die Frauen". A publication on Vienna's collector's of the turn of the century should result from the symposium and constitute the exhibition's contribution to art history.

With the Portrait of Sonja Knips in 1898, Gustav Klimt managed to become the portraitist of the Jewish haute bourgeoisie in Vienna who, since the Jews had reached legal equality in 1867, had become a thriving force in commerce, finance, industry and art. Klimt's patrons were financiers, industrials and other members of the liberal (in the European sense) haute bourgeoisie. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer (see Klimt's portrait of his wife below) was dominating the Austrian-Czech sugar industry. Karl Wittgenstein, another of his patrons, was often referred to as the "Austrian Krupp" and the creator of the steel cartel. August Lederer was the leading figure in the alcohol business in Central Europe. In the 1920s, he was considered "the richest man in Austria after Rothschild".
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