Gustav Klimt

1862-1918, Austrian painter, famous representatives of Viennese Art Nouveau

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) already was a renowned artist, Vienna's Ringstrasse with its Mural Art Nouveau crucial had distinct and was co-founder of the Vienna secession, was his "Golden style". Inspired by Byzantine mosaics, he added ornamental surfaces in a golden bed such as aggregate gems. In his image, Klimt describes the way of life of the people, by the shoots adversely affected that finds his salvation in the kiss. The representations of the body have a subtle erotic, however the figures dissolve into ornamental, geometrical colour surfaces. He does not only apply this principle style for his images of pair, but also the portraits of wealthy ladies and the landscape images. This flat style is today synonymous with the intense colour art of Klimt that characterizes his work but only in 1905.

Klimt was understood not only to gold and opulence, he was also a great artist. In the course of his life he produced numerous drawings. Most of the time as preparatory studies for larger works.

The son of an engraver learned his craft at the Vienna School of Applied Arts. Still searching for an independent expression, his early work is marked by the historicism Hans Makart, the artist Prince of the Habsburg monarchy in the late 19th century. A community of artists with his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch making, the young painters have received numerous orders for the design of new buildings on the Ringstrasse. The staircases of the Vienna Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum bear witness to the historicist style of this community studios. Like so many young and open-minded artists of the Fin-de-siècle also Gustav Klimt turned off at the end of the 1890s of the academic tradition. In 1897, he founded the "Vienna secession", which he presided in 1905 until his exit as President with other artists. The own exhibition building of the secession is still place and temple for the new young art.

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