Gustav Klimt - Master Artist

This week's blog post is written by Marianne Wilson Stein of Gifts from the Earth.

German artist Gustav Klimt is one of my favorites.  He was born on July 14,1862 and lived in Baumgarten, Vienna, Austria.  He was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art.

What inspires me about Klimt’s work is his use of repeating patterns and designs.  His paintings were organic in design and filled with symbolic shapes.  He was also a master of use of color, not afraid to create bold color combinations. Bildnis der Adele Bloch-Bauer

He painted various subject matter.  I think I love his paintings of women the most.  Klimt was not afraid to paint a woman’s body in all stages of life, like that of The Three Stages of Woman and Death and Life Completed.  He loved the erotic and painted his subjects with a very feminine touch.  

His work is sometimes ethereal leaving me with a haunting feeling.  His body of work is bold and timeless. Irrlichter (Will-O’-The-Wisp)

One of my favorite periods of his work is his Golden Phase:

Klimt's 'Golden Phase' was marked by positive critical reaction and success. Many of his paintings from this period used gold leaf; the prominent use of gold can first be traced back to Pallas Athene (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907-1908). Klimt travelled little but trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their beautiful mosaics, 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, which 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 work, and as he publicly stated, "probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament." 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 Flöge modeling clothing he designed.

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.

Klimt wrote little about his vision or his methods. He wrote mostly postcards to Flöge 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."

 - Klimt Museum

I have studied his body of work and I bet he was a man who loved and appreciated beauty in the world.  What are your thoughts about his work?