Gustav Klimt

Biography of Gustav Klimt

Gustav KLIMT was born in 1862 in the outskirts of Vienna, Austria.

His father was a chaser goldsmith and his mother pursued a lyrical career; just like him, one of his brothers would become a painter.

Immersed in this artistic environment, it is natural that he follows this path and enters the decorative arts school of the museum of art and industry in Vienna at the age of 14.

He made a living by making portraits from photographs before opening a workshop with his brother, Ernst. Together they carried out numerous joint works, especially for theatrical frescoes. KLIMT would maintain throughout his life a taste for large-scale works, almost monumental.

In 1892, his brother Ernst and his father passed away, plunging him into a deep crisis, even though his work was enjoying great success and recognition with numerous awards.

But Klimt remained unsatisfied, finding that his art remained too close to a stylized expression, which he considered overrated, inherited from a time that was no longer or would no longer be, very soon....

From 1897, he entered an extraordinarily creative period that saw him produce more than 4000 drawings in less than five years. His themes were then eroticism, love, and the representation of the human body in all its fragility.

Accused of being a pornographer by the bourgeoisie and conservatives, he nevertheless continued on this path, especially with the creation of the "Secession" group, which echoes other groups of the same name, created mainly by German expressionists.

It was in that same year, 1897, that he met Emilie Flöge, who would remain his companion until the end of his life and of whom he made only one portrait.

At the dawn of the 20th century, he began to exhibit throughout Europe and to find recognition that Austria no longer granted him.

In 1905 in Berlin, he received the "Villa Romana" prize; in 1906, he became an honorary member of the royal Bavarian academy of decorative arts in Munich; in 1908, he received the gold medal for "The Three Ages of Woman" at an art exhibition in Vienna; in 1911, he won first prize at an international exhibition in Rome.

His work remains today (see the sale of the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, in 2006 in New York) recognized and admired as the trigger, and even the symbol, of all the movements breaking with the old pictorial tradition that emerged, from the beginning of the century to the First World War.

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES