Gustav Klimt - portraits and landscapes, allegories in painting. Gustav Klimt, extensive gallery of paintings and videos

G. Klimt "Girlfriends"

One of the most famous painters of the past is Gustav Klimt, whose paintings are in great demand today. Unfortunately, there are not so many of his works, and all of them have long found their place in the best collections in the world. But when a miracle happens, and his paintings are put up for auction, their cost is fabulous.

Gustav Klimt, as a true artist, searched and found inspiration in female beauty all his life. But, as a true connoisseur, he did not stay with any beauty for a long time, and therefore none of them managed to be honored with the honor of being called Klimt's muse.

Gustav Klimt was born in the Vienna suburb of Baumgarten in the family of the engraver and jeweler Ernest Klimt, was the second of seven children - three boys and four girls. Klimt's father was a native of Bohemia and a gold engraver, his mother, Anna Klimt, nee Finster, tried, but could not become a musician. Klimt spent most of his childhood in poverty, as the economic situation in the country was difficult, and his parents did not have a permanent job. All three sons of Ernest Klimt became artists.

At first, Gustav learned to draw from his father, and then, from 1876, at the Vienna Art and Craft School at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (teachers Karl Grakhovina, Ludwig Minnigerode, Michael Rieser), which his brother Ernst entered in 1877. Gustav Klimt studied there until 1883 and specialized in architectural painting.

At the Artistic and Industrial School, where Klimt and his brothers studied on a scholarship, they drew attention to a promising student. Thanks to the lessons of his father, Gustav came to school as an excellent draftsman and a skilled designer, but he did not allow himself any indulgences. He studied seriously, diligently and thoughtfully, impressing teachers not only with success, but also with a fanatical desire to comprehend as much as possible. It was said that he bribed the servant of Hans Makart - the best Viennese painter of those years - in order to secretly enter the workshop of his idol and study the methods of his work on unfinished canvases. However, neither then nor later did the passion for high art prevent Klimt from remaining a pragmatist - while still at school, he learned to earn good money by drawing portraits from photographs.

His model during this period was the historical genre painter Hans Makart. Unlike many other young artists, Klimt agreed with the principles of a conservative academic education.

Ernst and Gustav Klimt made notable progress before reaching the age of 20. In 1879, they collaborated with their Art School friend Franz Match and began to work together, quickly gaining fame. In 1880, the trio was invited to paint the mineral water pavilion in Karlsbad (now the city of Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic).

The early works of the artist are made in a naturalistic style. However, Klimt soon develops his own style, which distinguishes him from any other artist.

Three years later, the young artists opened their own workshop in Vienna, where for several years they performed commissions from provincial Austro-Hungarian cities. But with the development of Vienna itself, a need arose for the artistic design of new buildings. Therefore, in 1886 Klimts and Match took part in the creation of the interior of the new building of the national theater, depicting scenes from the history of the theater on the tympanum of the pediment and the plafonds of the main stairs.

The Globe Theater in London - Gustav Klimt

In 1885 they worked on the design of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, begun by the famous painter Hans Makart (1840-1884). This experience, in addition to psychological satisfaction, brought them good money, which they invested in expanding their workshop.

In 1888, Klimt received an award from Emperor Franz Joseph - the "Golden Cross" for services to art. He also became an honorary member of the Munich and Vienna universities.

In 1891, the Klimt brothers met the Flöge sisters - Polina, Helena and Emilia. The daughters of the cabinet maker Herman Flöge worked as dressmakers, and later, when the wealthy father became the first manufacturer of meerschaum pipes in the whole empire, they moved into the field of high fashion - the eldest, Polina, headed the haute couture school, the younger sisters ran a fashion house, a fashion salon and a textile factory . We repeat, it was already later, so Ernst Klimt fell in love with Helena Flöge quite disinterestedly. But if their meetings were crowned with a swift wedding, then Gustav's strange relationship with Emilia stretched out for life - it is still not clear how far they went. Apparently, a terrible tragedy brought them closer at the very beginning of their acquaintance - in 1892, the Klimts lost their father, and three months later, young and promising Ernst died quite unexpectedly from pericarditis. Gustav, who was always kind to his family, took this double blow hard, fell into a protracted depression and almost abandoned his work. However, Flöge visited the house regularly, visiting his one-year-old niece and morally supporting the young widow Helena. The fact that sincere sympathy would not interfere with himself was the first to guess eighteen-year-old Emilia ...

In the end, Klimt managed to restore peace of mind, but much has changed irrevocably in him. The official academic painting, in which he reached all conceivable heights, bored him for a long time. The difficult life situation strengthened the artist's individual style, finally shaping it. The first landscapes Klimt begins to write while traveling with Emilia in Kammer. Expressionism in the artist's work is actively developing in the 90s.

From the beginning of the 1890s, Klimt annually rested with the Flöge family on Lake Attersee and painted many landscapes there. The landscape genre was the only non-figurative painting that interested Klimt. Klimt's landscapes are similar in style to his depictions of figures and contain the same design elements. Landscapes of the Attersee are so well nested in the plane of the canvas that it is sometimes assumed that Klimt viewed them through a telescope.

In the murals depicting allegorical figures performed by Klimt in 1890-1891 on the vaults of the great staircase of the Museum of Art History in Vienna, for the first time, the features that became the main ones in his work appear - a clear silhouette and a penchant for ornamentalism. After 1898, Klimt's work takes on a more decorative, symbolic aspect.

He had already attained a reputation as a well-known artist when, in the early 1990s, his style changed and acquired a pronounced symbolist coloring. The spread of the Art Nouveau style in Europe, or Art Nouveau, as it was called in Austria, not only touched Klimt, but turned out to be the most important factor in his development as an artist.

The taste for symbolism, expressed in England in the work of the late Pre-Raphaelites, in the graphics of O. Beardsley, in France in the work of G. Sea, appealed to Klimt, whose works largely echo the works of these artists.

The year 1894 became a landmark in the creative biography Gustav Klimt. It was then that he and his colleague Match were asked to paint the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. But due to disagreements, the artists had to take on separate paintings, and soon Match and completely left their common workshop. What caused the conflict? The point was that Franz Match remained faithful to the old traditional painting, Klimt actively looking for new approaches. This led to the fact that in 1897 he, along with his like-minded people, founded and led the revolutionary Vienna Secession, a group of dissident artists.

So, thanks to his determination and courage, Gustav Klimt from an artist fulfilling provincial orders, he turned into the leader of the Austrian avant-garde. The allegorical paintings "Philosophy", "Medicine" and "Jurisprudence", known as "faculty", were completed by 1900. They were sharply criticized for the subject matter, which was called "pornographic".

It was supposed that the artist would depict the triumph of sciences over universal chaos in the traditional manner, but Klimt decided differently: “Philosophy” in his sketches led people into an allegorical fog, “Medicine” indifferently turned away from the crowd of the dying, and “Jurisprudence” in the person of three furies ruthlessly attacked the human victim. And all this was flavored with a fair portion of undisguised eroticism.

Gustav Klimt "Pictures for the University" (Philosophy - Medicine - Jurisprudence)

In 1900, at the Secession exhibition Gustav Klimt, finally, presented "Philosophy" - his first work as part of the design of the University of Vienna. In response, eighty-seven university professors wrote to the Ministry of Education, accusing Klimt that he “expresses vague ideas with the help of indefinite forms”, and demanded to take away his order. It is curious that in the same 1900 year "Philosophy" was awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris.

Klimt transformed traditional allegories and symbols into a new language, with a greater emphasis on the erotic, and therefore more annoying to conservative viewers. Dissatisfaction was expressed by all circles - political, aesthetic and religious. As a result, the paintings were not displayed in the main university building. This was the last public order that the artist agreed to complete. After this, the paintings were acquired by patron August Lederer. In the 1930s, the Nazi authorities nationalized Lederer's collection of Klimt's works. At the end of the war, these works were moved to Immerhof Palace, but in 1945 Allied forces entered the area and retreating SS troops set fire to the castle. The paintings are dead. All that exists today are scattered preliminary sketches, black and white photographs of three poor quality paintings, and one color photograph of Hygiea from Medicine. Its sparkling gold and red colors give an idea of ​​how powerful these three lost works of art looked.

About five hundred years before our era, the Roman plebeians, offended by the arrogant patricians, left the city and refused to return until fair laws were passed that would equalize the rights of all citizens. From the first time, they didn’t really succeed, but the rebels eventually achieved their goal: democracy, albeit partially, triumphed, and the exodus itself went down in history under the name “secessio plebis” - “secession of the plebeians”.

Gustav Klimt, the founder and long-term leader of the Vienna Secession - the famous movement of rebel artists - despite the fact that he was born on the outskirts of imperial Vienna, was also a typical plebeian by birth.

Subsequently Gustav Klimt never again dealt with government orders, preferring to create small-format allegorical paintings for private collections. And they were mostly portraits, well known to many admirers of his work.

And the shameless beauties from the paintings of Klimt continued to successfully tease the conservative public. At his exhibition, the famous collector Count Laskoronski, holding his head, ran from painting to painting, shouting: “What a horror!” And it was still a rather harmless reaction, but in general Klimt was offered to judge, expel from the country and even castrate. The answers of the secessionists were much more creative. The ideologist of the "Secession" Herman Bahr published a provocative book "Against Klimt", collecting there the most stupid and vicious attacks - the reader had to make sure that only idiots scolded Klimt. And Klimt himself called his next canvas “To My Critics” - the entire foreground of the picture was occupied by a luxurious female backside ...

And suddenly, in the midst of the battle, Klimt again made a sharp turn - he left the post of head of the "Secession", founded his own Union of Austrian Artists and changed his creative style, opening his famous "Golden Period". Inspired by ancient Byzantine mosaics, he remembered the jewelry skills acquired in his youth and began to complement his paintings with magnificent gilded ornaments. Now he painted only faces and hands in portraits - framed by fantastic decor that replaced clothing and background, they were exactly like icons in gold salaries. And the main shrine of this pantheon was "Golden Adele" - a portrait of the young beauty Adele Bloch-Bauer - now the most expensive painting in the world.

It is unlikely that anyone will be able to count even the approximate number of stories related to the mysterious events surrounding Klimt’s painting “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer”, and not only because the characters who were directly related to this masterpiece have already passed into another world, but the painting , as if alive, continues to excite the imagination of people with its unusual fate ...

Only the Jewish mind can come up with a punishment for the offender, choosing for this purpose the very ... enemy who harmed him. The mind in which the plan of revenge was ripening belonged to the businessman Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, and Gustav Klimt, who could not resist the spell of the charming wife of the rich man, Adele, acted as the “offender”. This novel has long been discussed in the capital, but there could be no talk of divorce, and even more so of banal physical punishment for lovers. The relationship between the artist and Adele should end naturally, but Bloch-Bauer reasoned that he should speed things up, and at the same time benefit from this unpleasant story, because his last name would sound in the title of the picture.

Klimt constantly needed new relationships with women, without this “drug” he could not only create, but simply exist, therefore, having ordered a portrait of his wife, the industrialist counted on the inevitable satiety of lovers with each other, which would come while working on the canvas. The amount of the contract for the work stunned the artist, and for four years he worked on the work, having previously completed about a hundred sketches.

Working on the portrait, Klimt used the entire creative arsenal characteristic of the "golden period" of his painting: the face and hands, painted in a realistic manner, are combined with abstract scenery; Adele's attire and background are adorned with exotic symbolism, and the atmosphere is a subtle spicy "aroma".

All the "points" of the plan outlined by the customer were carried out, however, perhaps without his "brilliant" idea: his wife's health was getting worse, she smoked a lot, sometimes not getting out of bed all day, and work was often interrupted. Everyone was satisfied with the result of Klimt's efforts.

In 1938, when the artist and his fatal model, who contributed to the perpetuation of their names, as well as the name of Bloch-Bauer, were no longer alive, the elderly Ferdinand, fleeing from the Nazis, left the Golden Adele to his brother's family, and he settled in Switzerland. Maria Altman (before her marriage - Bloch-Bauer), Adele's niece, for some time became the owner of huge family treasures, including the famous portrait, but then she gave all the treasures for saving her husband. Hitler, although he ordered not to touch the work of Klimt, could not accept the painting into his collection due to the abundance of "Jewish roots" associated with its origin. The portrait appeared after the end of the war, and its condition was perfect, which is the merit of Alois Kunst, who once had tender feelings for Maria Bloch-Bauer and collaborated with the Gestapo during the war years. The painting took its place in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, and Kunst continued to store the work, but in official status, becoming the director of the museum.

Maria Altman, who settled with her husband in England and then in the United States, would never have known about the fate of her aunt’s portrait, but journalist Hubertus Chernin managed to find out that there was a testament of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, according to which the “Golden Adele”, and together with her and other values ​​should belong to the family, in this case, Mary.

For Austria, which considered the painting a national relic, the time has come for disturbing events that forced people, as well as all institutions of power, to rally around the desire to leave the canvas in the country in any way. The price of five works, among which was this masterpiece, rose from 155 million dollars to 300 million. Such an amount was unbearable for Austria.

Seeing off the "Golden Adele" could be compared with a nationwide event, without coercion gathered thousands of people who wished to say goodbye to the national treasure.

In the USA, a building was specially built for the "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", which is called the "Museum of Austrian and German Art"; it was built by Ronald Lauder, the owner of the famous perfume giant Esty Lauder, who purchased the portrait from Maria Altman for $135 million. Niece Adele lived to the age of 94 and passed away peacefully in 2011.

For the journalist Chernin, the impoverished son of a count family, who believed that thanks to the provision of the services of Maria Altman, he would be able to live on a grand scale, fate had a more prosaic ending: only four months had passed after Austria parted with the Klimtian masterpieces and, according to the official police version, the journalist died of a heart attack.

Most likely, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer knew something, demanding from Klimt a work that will live for centuries.

The golden period" of Klimt's work was marked by a positive reaction from critics and is the most successful for Klimt. The name of the period comes from the gilding used in many of the artist's works, beginning with " Palace of Athens" () And " Judith" (), but his most famous work of this period is " Kiss» (-). The golden background and symbolism, close to Byzantine, date back to the mosaics of Venice and Ravenna, seen by Klimt during a trip to Italy. At the same time, he became interested in decorative art in the Art Nouveau style. In 1904, he and a group of artists received an order for the decoration of the Stoclet Palace, owned by a Belgian industrialist and which became one of the most famous monuments of Art Nouveau. Klimt owns the details of the decorations of the dining room, which he himself attributed to his best decorative works. Between 1909 and 1909, Klimt completed five portraits of women dressed in furs.

Judith is a female character, a widow who saved her entire Jewish family from enemies. The Assyrians besieged her hometown, the widow had to change clothes and go to the camp of the damned enemy. She was a very attractive maiden and the commander of the enemy side could not ignore her charms.

In his chambers, he consoled himself with a beautiful body and drank wine. After the man fell asleep, the maiden cut off his head and proudly brought it to the feet of her people. This story has inspired many artists of all time. Gustav Klimt was no exception. He portrayed his image of a brave and desperate woman.

In his understanding, Judith is a femme fatale. He depicted her coming out of the tent of the enemy. The girl did not have time to put herself in order and did not even wrap the edges of her robe. Her breasts peek out slightly from under the dress. The head in the hand is not immediately evident. The author sought to show her proud and slightly arrogant look. In this battle, she became a real winner and it doesn’t matter at all that the enemy was drunk and was in a state of sleep. The heroine still remains a fragile, feminine person who is ready to fight to the last.

The artist painted the picture in 1901. The wife of a famous banker in Venice posed for this portrait. The work was carried out for several years, then a new relationship arose with someone else's wife. As a result, the world saw a contradictory canvas. On the one hand, this is a woman who became a savior. She thought about the victory of the people and therefore gave her charms to Holofernes. Many condemn her, because it was more revenge and a surge of anger against the entire male population.

Everyone knows that the young maiden was unhappy in her marriage, she does not even cry when she learns about the death of her husband. The author uses solar colors as a symbol of victory and a new period in the life of the Jews. But the heroine's eyes are practically closed, it is not clear whether she is happy about this execution or regrets the murder she has committed.

Biographers claim that it is precisely because of his penchant for minimalism in the size of the works, Gustav Klimt received the biggest order in his life - an order for the design of the new house of the Belgian industrialist Adolphe Stoclet, known as the Frieze Stoclet.

Among the most famous works of Klimt is the frieze he made in the dining room of the Stocklet Palace in Brussels, built by J. Hofmann. The architecture of the Stoklet Palace itself is a typical work of Art Nouveau, and the Klimt frieze corresponds to the style of the building. Byzantine mosaics made a great impression on Klimt, which is especially noticeable in the scenery of this palace. Actually, the mosaic-ness was also inherent in his pictorial style - he made up entire surfaces in his paintings from separate pieces of color, all kinds of curlicues and ornamental fragments. In the frieze of the Stoklet Palace, he works directly in the mosaic technique: a colorful composition is made up of colored enamel, glass, ceramics, metal, partially gilded, ivory, mother-of-pearl.

The use of expensive, exotic materials in this frieze is also quite in the taste of Art Nouveau. On the background of the frieze there are trees with branches stylized in spiral curls, with leaves and birds. There are also images of human figures in the frieze - “Waiting” in the form of a female figure, whose dress is decorated with an ornament of curls and triangles depicting an eye. The face is depicted so similar to the Japanese that one might think that it is copied from the engraving of the then popular Hiroeige. The other two figures are merged together in an embrace, resembling in composition a motif that is repeated many times in Klimt's paintings.

Gustav Klimt is the leader of the Viennese avant-garde at the turn of the century, an active member of the Secession community of innovative artists. Klimt's best work is his later portraits, with their flat, unshaded surfaces, transparent, mosaic-like colors and shapes, and sinuous, ornate lines and patterns. Klimt's paintings combine two opposing forces; on the one hand, it is a thirst for absolute freedom in depicting objects, which leads to a play of ornamental forms. These works are in fact symbolic and must be seen in the context of symbolism as an expression of an unattainable world above time and reality. On the other hand, it is the power of perception of nature, the influence of which softens the splendor of ornamentation in his paintings.

Gustav Klimt created paintings that, in their artistic conception, were close to objects of decorative and applied art. The very impressions of reality served only as a pretext for the picture, but not as its content. Figures and objects were stylized in the spirit of Art Nouveau. Klimt's background was always planar, woven with small patterns. The contrast to this background was illusory, volumetrically interpreted parts of the image - usually the face.

Klimt depicted figures as elongated, often resorting to a sharply expressive profile silhouette. The staging of figures by Klimt is purely conditional, statuary; if it depicts two people, then this is most often the plot of a hug, a kiss, if there are several figures in the composition, then they all merge into one group, and the same conditional ornamental background spreads around them.

The models depicted by Klimt are always characterized by increased emotionality: they are nervous, tense, sensual, aggressive. It was his individual tone of perception of reality. It was revealed in the preparatory works of Klimt - his drawings. If during the life of the artist his drawings were little known and they were not given much importance, then in recent years Klimt's graphic heritage has attracted great attention from the public and collectors. In Europe, several exhibitions devoted exclusively to Klimt's drawings were successfully held.

In 1909, Klimt continued the theme of Judith, without taking into account the negative reaction of society to previous works, which were far in essence from the plots described in the Bible. The traditional notions of virtue again gave way to their own, "impregnated" with sensual eroticism, view of the world.

In the painting “Judith II”, the painter managed to create an image showing what powerful internal forces can be hidden in the “weak” female nature. During this period of Klimt's life and work, in a love relationship with Adele Bloch-Bauer, some kind of spark was probably still smoldering, otherwise, where would this terrible, and at the same time enchanting power of evil energy, erupt from the canvas.

Klimt did not particularly react to the hype around his first “Judith”, which offended the feelings of both the Jewish bourgeoisie and people of the Christian faith, but this time he decided not to make an inscription on the frame indicating the name of the picture, already knowing that the work would speak for itself (“Judith and Holofernes” was presented in a copper frame on which her name was engraved).

The people decided that this fatal woman, who attracts the eye, but repels the soul, can only be Salome, whose dance must be dedicated to Eros, depicted in an intriguing duet with Death; the viewer had to wait for the “denouement”, experiencing languishing tension. In many catalogs, the work was listed under the name of the biblical dancer, who destroyed John the Baptist with her “hellish” dance, but the fact that Klimt created a female character who could embody the most vicious fantasies, while calling him the name of the pious Judith, again caused a sharply negative reaction from critics .

The artist never gave explanations regarding any details of his works, so it remains unknown what, according to the author's intention, could be common to two such contradictory images.

If in the paintings and wall paintings of Klimt you can find a lot of “quotes * from the work of other artists, the eclectic origins of his style, the pompous and excessive stylization of the artistic language, are striking, then in the drawings, where the artist briefly recorded impressions about? nature and plans for future paintings, his insight is manifested. the ability to show the essence, character of the model, to create an expressive artistic image with concise means.

The immediacy and frankness of Klimt as a draftsman explain to the historian why he, as an artistic personality, had such a huge influence in Vienna at the turn of the century. Klimt was a very gifted artist, but he considered the goal of his work not to reveal an individual view of the world, but to create a certain style common to fine and decorative art. Therefore, he borrowed and himself created certain “clichés” of images and ornaments, which he constantly applied in his works and which make them so similar to each other. He tried to give his works a deep philosophical and psychological overtones. The vagueness of images and associations, embodied by Klimt. as if echoing the psychoanalytic constructions of his contemporary, the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud.

The obscurity of the symbols used by the artist, the emphasized ambiguity in the reading of all his compositions served to ensure that they did not lend themselves to one, precisely established decoding, but could be interpreted by everyone depending on his artistic experience. So, the reading options for his composition “Hope”, created in 1903 and depicting a young naked woman with an open womb, inside of which lies a child, can be ambiguous. Behind her is a skeleton and some monsters, reminiscent of the fact that the continuation of human life passes under the sign of death.

Klimt led a rather simple life, worked in his own house, devoted all his time to painting (including the Secession movement) and family, and was not on friendly terms with other artists. He was famous enough to receive many private commissions, and was able to choose from them what he was interested in. Like Rodin, Klimt used mythology and allegory to mask his deeply erotic nature, and his drawings often betray a purely sexual interest in women. As a rule, his models agreed to pose in any arbitrarily erotic positions; many of them were prostitutes.

Klimt wrote very little about his vision of art or his methods. He did not keep a diary, and sent postcards to Flöge. In his Commentary on a Non-Existing Self-Portrait, he states: “I have never painted self-portraits. I am much less interested in myself as the subject of a picture than other people, especially women ... There is nothing special about me. I am an artist who paints day after day from morning to night… Whoever wants to know something about me… should carefully consider my paintings.”

Gustav Klimt never married, but he had numerous affairs. He is credited with from three to forty illegitimate children. For example, the Austrian film director and cameraman Gustav Ucicki claimed that he was the son of Klimt.

In his longest and most intimate relationship with a woman, sex may have been absent altogether, according to biographers.

With the methods of “management”, Klimt surprisingly resembled another illustrious resident of the then Vienna - Sigmund Freud, who also made a fortune on the whims of rich ladies. By the way, the similarities don't end there. The eroticism that permeates almost every Klimt's canvas remarkably echoes the ubiquitous Freudian libido, and the symbolic clash of the world's elements - another leitmotif of his work - is traditionally interpreted through the Freudian confrontation between Eros and Thanatos. Although it is still unknown what happened before, because Freud developed this part of his theory after Klimt's death.

Whether Klimt attended consultations with Freud is, of course, an interesting question. Of course, Gustav, with his poorly concealed erotomania, was a real find for psychoanalysts, but it is unlikely that he himself considered his weakness to be a disease requiring treatment. On the contrary, he gladly followed young charmers, and when income allowed, he arranged a real seraglio in his workshop. When the owner in sandals and an ancient Greek mantle on a naked body worked behind a canvas, they usually wandered around, lay and sat, eating fruit, three or four naked beauty models - an inexhaustible source of inspiration. From time to time he shouted to one of them “Freeze!” and sketched a pose that impressed him - there were several thousand such sketches left after Klimt, not counting those that he burned, considering them unnecessary.

Needless to say, the new Sultan was not limited to the Platonic contemplation of girlish beauty, and his models regularly produced children. Rumor attributed to Klimt a dozen illegitimate children, whom he, by the way, willingly recognized as his own and gave money for their maintenance. Gustav singled out a certain Mizzi, Maria Zimmerman, who gave birth to his son and daughter, - he patronized her all his life, helped not only with money, but also with good advice, having once dissuaded her from the seductive but dangerous career of an artist.

She was the daughter of the pipe manufacturer Hermann Flöge (1837-1897) and trained first as a dressmaker. She later became a fashion designer and, together with her sister Helena, owned a haute couture salon called the Flöge Sisters in Vienna from 1904.

Emilia's life is the focus of Elizabeth Hickey's book The Painted Kiss. The Painted Kiss) (reference to Klimt's painting "The Kiss") (Wikipedia)

In 1904, the three Flöge sisters founded a fashion house and became the leading couturiers in Vienna. Adapting Parisian fashions to local tastes and creating their own designs, the sisters dressed Austria's most elegant - and wealthy - women. Klimt contributed to Flöge's models and helped decorate the demonstration room.

Gradually, Emilia and Gustav became inseparable - at least in business. Many biographers and experts doubt that they had an affair. Emilia was proud of her modernity, in her personal life no one had an order for her, and Klimt, it seems, treated her as an equal person.

However, Klimt painted only a couple of portraits of Emilia. The canvas of 1902 deserves special attention. Paying tribute to the woman’s favorite work (she was a co-owner of the Sisters Flöge fashion house and a talented fashion designer), the artist dressed her in an outfit with a complex ornamental pattern in his “signature” style. But more important in this picture of Gustav Klimt is the care with which the face and hands of Emilia are written. The researchers believe that such fine detail suggests that he knew this face and hands thoroughly.

Biographers still cannot agree on the relationship between Klimt and Flöge. Some argue that she was his constant mistress, whom he never bothered to marry. Others are sure that their connection was exclusively platonic, and that is why Emilia did not give birth to a child to the artist. Be that as it may, the relationship between Klimt and Flöge lasted 27 years, and, according to eyewitnesses, the last words of the artist after the stroke that struck him was a request to send for Emilia.

Why humiliate a worthy woman with a fictitious intimacy with a sexual maniac who cheated on her almost every day? Only on the grounds that someone saw Emilia's face on the famous Klimt's "The Kiss"? So this is just one of the hypotheses, the heroine of “The Kiss” is not very similar to the reliable portraits of Emilia. But if Klimt had wished to portray Emilia, he would have done it without difficulty - with his photographic accuracy ... In addition, two people participate in the “Kiss”, and the man, of course, should be Klimt himself. But the artist officially stated in the press that his self-portraits do not exist, since he does not consider himself to be either suitable material for creativity, or an interesting enough object for the viewer.

Description of the painting by Gustav Klimt “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II”

"... Terribly tender and languid... Spiritual face... Smug and elegant", this excerpt from the phrase of Maria Altman, the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who recalled her famous aunt with admiration and love, most successfully fits as an epigraph to the fourth - final work of Klimt, on which one of his peculiar "muses" is immortalized.

"Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II" was written by the master in 1912, five years after he created the "Golden Adele". The beauty of the heroine has not faded over the years, her dark hair and bright sensual lips are still attractive; their contrast with the pale tone of the canvas gives them a moderately dosed freshness. The look is just as confident, although a barely perceptible sadness was added to it. The “signature” Klimtian ornament looks harmonious. The master did not begin to create perspective depth, having decided to stop on the plane. Adele's dress is also depicted in the usual two-dimensional plane, this also applies to the interior, divided into two parts: red and green.

A significant part of the elements of the picture is made in a simplified form, and the image of the hands looks even schematic, but all the viewer’s attention is drawn to the face, which belongs to a spoiled woman, but so mysterious and “deep”.

Adele stands on the path of the garden, in her pose there is some resemblance to the icon painting. Husband Ferdinand, apparently satisfied with the execution of his "Jesuit" plan, according to which Klimt should have developed an aversion to the mistress model, is no longer opposed to his wife appearing in the painter's garden. There were many bad rumors in Vienna that mentioned this garden, where you could meet naked ladies of different classes. Also, the rumor claimed that Klimt painted pictures from naked models, and “dressed” them in ornamental clothes only at the very end of the work. Most likely, during this period of the relationship between the painter and Adele, their relationship was already far from the stormy passion that the previous canvases were saturated with.

The work, like its first version, left Austria in 2006 and is now in the United States.

No, you should not look for "faithful and eternal love" in Klimt's biography. He, like no one else, knew how to portray women as unspeakably desirable, but this does not mean at all that at least once in his life he was visited by an irrational feeling of falling in love. An absolute pragmatist at work and in everyday life, Klimt did not belong to the number of people consumed by passions. In addition, all his life he strove for complete freedom and, very possibly, consciously avoided any long-term attachments and deep hobbies - he had enough easily accessible models and frivolous admirers.

The only woman who enjoyed the unchanging devotion and love of Gustav throughout his life was his mother, Anna Klimt. She dreamed of professionally making music and traveling the world with concerts, but this was not destined to come true. It is not known what exactly caused it: either a lack of talent, or marriage and the birth of seven children. Be that as it may, in the end, Anna decided to devote her life entirely to her famous son. She did not go out with him and did not try to attribute some of Klimt's merits to herself, but simply lived quietly and imperceptibly in her son's house, caring only that he always had a hot dinner and clean clothes. The artist himself took this for granted, although he had no particular whims. Being carried away by work, he often forgot to eat, and preferred the traditional blue blouse of the artist to any other clothes. All the years she quietly and imperceptibly lived next to her famous son, preparing breakfast for him, collecting him on infrequent trips and pretending that she knew nothing about the mores of his workshop. Almost all my life Gustav Klimt spent in Vienna, living with his mother. Despite his strong physique and love of sports, he was increasingly overcome by depression, and since 1912 Klimt forced to go to the water every year. The death of his mother in 1915 shocked Klimt more than all the horrors of the world war.

On February 6, Gustav Klimt died in Vienna from pneumonia, having suffered a stroke before that. He was buried at the Hietzing Cemetery in Vienna. Many paintings were left unfinished.

In general, in the first years of our century, Klimt repeatedly comes into conflict with the public, which does not accept his works. In 1903, the Secession arranges a personal exhibition of Klimt, but after that the artist breaks with the association, which indicates his disagreements with his colleagues.

Nevertheless, although Klimt was not an even artist and was not always understood by his contemporaries, he had a great influence on the development of Austrian art at the beginning of the 20th century. Klimt was the first to introduce the notion of grand style into Austrian painting.

By the end of his life in 1917, Klimt won full official recognition, becoming an honorary professor at the Vienna and Munich academies.

The sharply individual manner of drawing inherent in him became the basis for the search for younger artists, future representatives of expressionism - Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

The wide recognition of the artist's work is evidenced by the fact that during his lifetime his works were bought not only by private collectors, but also by large state galleries. So, in 1908, the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome bought his work "Three Ages of a Woman", and the Austrian State Gallery - "The Kiss". True, until that time he managed to quarrel with the participants of the Secession and left this organization. On February 6, 1918, the artist died at the zenith of his fame - a rarity in the history of painting.

Klimt's works were sold with enduring success even after the death of the author, constantly increasing in price. During the Second World War, the Nazis bought the artist's canvases for nothing from private owners, many of whom were Jews. Saving their lives, collectors did not hesitate to part with their belongings. By the middle of the twentieth century, the iconic paintings of the Austrian settled in state galleries. The auctions were mostly drawings.

In the early 1970s, a Klimt landscape could be purchased for $400,000-600,000. In 1978, the New York dealer Serge Sabarsky bought the work of the master "Park" for $500,000. Portraits that occasionally hit the market were valued at that time up to $1 million A decade later, prices for similar works have increased by almost 4 times. For example, in 1987, a resident of Canada, Ms. Primavesi, sold at Sotheby's a magnificent portrait of her own mother by Gustav Klimt - “Portrait of Eugenia (Mada) Primavesi”. It is noteworthy that the canvas belonged to the most famous so-called golden period of the master. Japanese art dealer Shigeki Kameyama got it for only $3.85 million. But in 1994, the painting Lady with a Fan from the same period was sold at Sotheby's for $11.5 million. Lake Attersee II" went under the hammer at Christie's for $23.5 million. The seller, who bought this painting ten years earlier at Sotheby's for $5.3 million, earned $18.2 million. In 2003, "Country House in the Attersee" was sold to Sotheby's for $ 29.128 million. Just three years later, prices for Klimt's works of the same level and the same period rose again. After the court scandal (which will be discussed below), “Houses in Unterach near Attersee” will be sold at Christie’s for $ 31.4 million. Not only finished canvases and pencil sketches were sold at auctions, but even watercolor postcards written by Klimt himself. Yes, in October 1999. At Sotheby`s, an unknown buyer bought a set of 24 postcards for $481.4 thousand.

For the global art market, 2003 was marked by a sensation. The American court, after long delays, accepted the application of the US citizen Maria Altman against the Republic of Austria. The 76-year-old plaintiff demanded that five paintings by Gustav Klimt, stored in the Austrian Gallery, located in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, be handed over to her. Ms. Altmann, heiress of the late Austrian industrialist Bloch-Bauer, claimed that the paintings were illegally taken from her ancestor by the Nazis, from whose hands they ended up in the gallery. The basis for the claim was the Austrian law on restitution in the new edition, which entered into force a few years earlier. It is possible that the elderly lady was advised to do so by professionals. “It is likely that this was not only her personal decision. I admit that Maria Altman was advised to enter into a lawsuit for the canvases by people who intended to make good money on it, ”says the owner of the Bosco gallery. Indeed, the global art market has been experiencing a shortage of iconic paintings by great artists for many years. And provoking restorative lawsuits is one of the few effective ways to make up for this shortcoming. One way or another, the event received unprecedented publicity due to the fact that among the controversial paintings there was a pearl not only of the Austrian gallery and Klimt’s work, but of the whole modernity - the painting “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I”, written in 1907. The Austrians called her their Mona Lisa.

Immortalized on canvas, Adele was the young wife of an elderly businessman and philanthropist Bloch-Bauer, who supported Klimt financially for many years. It was he who at one time acted as the customer for the portrait. By the way, Frau Bloch-Bauer went down in history also as the only model from whom Gustav Klimt painted a portrait twice.

It seemed that the application of Maria Altman had very vague judicial prospects. Especially if you take into account the advanced age of the plaintiff. But the more sensational in 2006 was the court decision in her favor. Panic broke out in Austria. Members of the government rushed about in search of patrons who were willing to buy five paintings from the heiress, then bankers who were willing to give a loan for this enterprise, and finally made an unsuccessful attempt to issue “Klimt bonds” in order to raise the required amount. And the new mistress, meanwhile, filled the price of the goods: $100 million, $150 million, $200 million ... When the old woman asked for $300 million for the paintings, the Austrians dropped their hands. In the winter of 2006, the Federal Chancellor of Austria officially announced the termination of negotiations and the refusal of the state from the priority right to buy. And already in the summer of the same year, a new sensation broke out: “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” was bought by philanthropist Ronald Lauder, heir to the famous Estee Lauder, founder of the cosmetics empire of the same name, for a record $135 million. Thus, this painting became at that time the most expensive in the world , breaking the $104 million record set in 2004 at Sotheby's for Pablo Picasso's Boy with a Pipe. An indispensable condition for the purchase was that Lauder undertook to exhibit the portrait in his own New York gallery Neue Galerie for the public to see. The deal was concluded without going through the auctioneers, which allowed the businessman to save up to 20% of its value on commissions. By the way, this way of replenishing collections is chosen by many collectors. According to the European Foundation for the Fine Arts (TEFAF), the volume of the global private art market in 2007 amounted to $30 billion.

The fate of the other four Belvedere paintings also deserves attention. The hype around the first portrait of Adele did its job: the heated auction public was ready to part with millions without regrets. In 2006, four canvases from the Belvedere went under the hammer at Christie's for $192.6. The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II fetched $87.9 million (estimated at $40-60 million). For "Birch Forest" - $40.3 million (estimate - 20-30 million), "Yablonya I" went for $33 million (estimate - $15-25 million), and "Houses in Unterach near Attersee", as already mentioned, - for $31.4 million (estimate - $18-25 million). Ms. Altman then modestly admitted to the press that she was satisfied with the results of the deal. And Edward Dolman, chief executive of Christie's International, confirmed: "2006 has been a phenomenal year for Christie's." It was in 2006 that home sales grew by 36% in monetary terms. Only the proceeds from the sale of the Impressionists and Modernists exceeded $1.2 billion. The history of the sale of the "Golden Adele" radically influenced the sharp rise in the price of all Klimt's works put up for sale. Moreover, some experts assess this impact negatively. Thus, the American art historian Elizabeth Kuzhavsky notes: “This is an artificial market created by a single person. In all cases of recent sales of Klimt, the prices for his works were unreasonably inflated at least twice. It's all the fault, mainly, "Golden Adele". In response, Lauder half-jokingly, half-seriously replies: “I had no intention of shaping the market in any way. I just got the passion. No one in the whole world wanted her (“Golden Adele.” - Approx. Aut.) The way I did "

In 2006, the Hollywood film "Klimt" was released. The picture begins with the fact that the artist, played by John Malkovich, who is dying in the clinic, mutters: "Flowers, flowers ...". "What kind of flowers?" - everyone in the ward looks around in confusion ... At a press conference, director Raul Ruiz was asked if this was a hint at the symbol of that era - Charles Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil"? In response, Ruiz laughed: “Flowers are the same cells, the division of which in one of the episodes is shown to the artist under a microscope by his friend, a doctor, the syphilis cells that killed Klimt”

Reference:

Modern style(from French moderne - modern, another name: art nouveau (fr. art nouveau, lit. "new art"), Jugendstil (German Jugendstil - "young style") - an artistic direction in art, the most popular in the second half XIX - early XX century Distinctive features of the Art Nouveau style are the rejection of straight lines and angles in favor of more natural, "natural" lines, interest in new technologies (for example, in architecture), the flourishing of applied art.

Art Nouveau strove to combine the artistic and utilitarian functions of the created works, to involve all spheres of human activity in the sphere of beauty. In other countries it is also called: “tiffany” (named after L.K. Tiffany) in the USA, “art nouveau” and “fin de siècle” (lit. “end of the century”) in France, “art nouveau” (more precisely, “ Jugendstil" - German Jugendstil, after the name of the illustrated magazine Die Jugend founded in 1896) in Germany, "Secession style" (Secessionsstil) in Austria, "modern style" (modern style, lit. "modern style") in England, " Liberty style" in Italy, "modernismo" in Spain, "Nieuwe Kunst" in the Netherlands, "spruce style" (style sapin) in Switzerland.

Biography
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) - artist, founder of Art Nouveau in Austrian painting. One of the most refined artists of the Art Nouveau era. At the beginning of the 20th century, his frankly erotic paintings shocked the refined Viennese public. Some considered Klimt a genius, others - "a perverted decadent."

He was born in the Vienna suburb of Baumgarten on July 14, 1862 in the family of the engraver and jeweler Ernest Klimt. He studied with his father, and in 1875-1883 - at the school of crafts at the Vienna Austrian Art and Industry Museum, where his younger brother Ernest also entered in 1877.

1879-1885 - Gustav with his brother and young artist Franz Match works, decorating the theaters of the Austro-Hungarian province (in Reichenberg, Fiume and Karlsbad - Karlovy Vary) and the ceilings of Viennese palaces with decorative painting, and already in 1880 - receives the first serious order - "Four allegory."

1885-1886 - they decorate the Vienna buildings of the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
During this period of joint work, Klimt's style begins to differ from that of his brother and Mutsch and moves away from the academic manner of drawing.

Upon completion of work at the Burgtheater, Emperor Franz Joseph awards Klimt the Golden Cross for services to art.

1886 - Klimt performs wall panels for the assembly hall of the University of Vienna with an allegorical image of the three faculties "Jurisprudence", "Philosophy" and "Medicine". The canvases will be rejected due to "provocative eroticism": the Klimtian ladies, symbolizing Philosophy and other disciplines, seemed to the customer too cutesy and incompatible with the spirit of rigorous science.

1891 - Klimt becomes a member of the Union of Fine Arts.

1894 - Klimt, together with Franz Match, receives an order for the decoration of "Aula Magna" at the University of Vienna.

More and more involved in the elements of modernity and, accordingly, in opposition to the academic tradition, Klimt became in 1897 one of the founders of the Vienna Secession, independent of the Academy of Arts (German: Sezession - “falling away”, “separation”). He forever breaks with official creative circles and immediately leads a new community of innovative painters. In the same year, in the summer, in the town of Kammer on the Attersee, he painted his first landscapes.

1898 - The Sacrum newspaper is founded - the public organ of the Secession, the first exhibitions of its members are held. During these years, Klimt developed as an expressionist, his works are distinguished by the ornamental depiction of forms that are filled with mosaics.

1901-1902 - for the exhibition building of the Secession, Klimt creates the "Beethoven Frieze", embodying the themes of the Ninth Symphony.

1903 - Klimt travels around Italy (Ravenna, Venice, Florence). Luxurious Byzantine mosaics seen here stagger the imagination of the master. Since then, the ability to convey real objects through the play of decorative ornaments has become his hallmark. His "golden period" begins. On his initiative, the "Viennese Workshops" were created, which played an important role in the stylistic renewal of Austrian design. In the same year, a retrospective of works by Gustav Klimt is held at the Secession.

1904 - Klimt writes sketches for the wall mosaics of the Stoclet Palace in Brussels, which were made in the artist's Viennese studio.

1905 - Aula Magna slabs, created at the University of Vienna, are purchased from the Austrian Gallery.

After leaving the Secession in 1906, he founded the new Union of Austrian Artists, supporting the still little-known O. Kokoschka and E. Schiele at its exhibitions.
1909-1911 - works on frescoes in the Stoclet Palace.

1917 - Begins work on The Bride and Adam and Eve. Only at this time did he win full official recognition, becoming an honorary professor at the Vienna and Munich academies.
February 6, 1918 Klimt dies in Vienna from a stroke, leaving a huge amount of unfinished work.

Klimt went down in history, first of all, with his sharply expressive female portraits (E. Flöge, 1902, A. Bloch-Bauer, 1907) and symbolic paintings, saturated with dramatic, “fatal” eroticism (“Judith 1”, 1901; “Kiss”, 1907-1908, Salome, 1901; Danae, 1907). He enhanced this “Dionysian” drama with golden backgrounds, then with large color patterns, from the shimmering elements of which, as if from the floor, shimmering figures were born.

Gustav Klimt. Symbolism of the "Secession" and femme fatales

Athena Pallas. 1898

Here Klimt first used gold. Sensual ornamentation emphasizes the important erotic component of his ideas about the world.

“We want to declare war on sterile routine, immobile Byzantinism, all kinds of bad taste... Our Secession is not a struggle between contemporary artists and old masters, but a struggle for the success of artists, not shopkeepers who call themselves artists, but at the same time, their commercial interests interfere with the flourishing of art. This declaration of Hermann Bahr, playwright and theater critic, the spiritual father of the secessionists, can serve as a motto for the founding in 1897 of the "Vienna Secession", one of the founders, president (until 1905) and spiritual leader of which was Klimt.

Artists of the younger generation no longer wanted to accept the tutelage that academism imposed on them; they demanded that their work be exhibited in a proper place, free from "market forces". They wanted to end the cultural isolation of Vienna, invite artists from abroad to the city and make the work of the Secession members known in other countries. The program of the secessionists was significant not only in the "aesthetic" context, but also as a battle for the "right to create", for art as such; it was the basis for the battle between "great art" and "secondary genres", between "art for the rich" and "art for the poor" - in short, between "Venus" and "Nini".

The "Viennese Secession" played an important role in the development and dissemination of the Art Nouveau style as a force opposing official academism and bourgeois conservatism. This revolt of youth in search of liberation from the restrictions imposed on art by social, political and aesthetic conservatism, could develop through unprecedented success and culminate in a utopian project: the idea of ​​transforming society through art.

The Vienna Secession art association began to publish its own magazine, Ver Sacrum (Holy Spring), with which Klimt collaborated regularly for two years. After the success of the movement and successful exhibitions in other countries, the project to build an exhibition building for the Secession became a reality. Klimt submitted his Greco-Roman blueprints for the project, but preference was given to (and ultimately implemented) the "palace of arts" design designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich. His concept was to mix geometric shapes - from a cube to a sphere. On the pediment was placed the famous saying of the art critic Ludwig Hevesy: “Time is your art. Art is your freedom."

The opening in March 1898 of the exhibition building of the Vienna Secession was eagerly awaited. Here Klimt presented the composition "Theseus and My Notaur", filled with rich symbolic meaning. The fig leaf was deliberately absent, and the artist was forced to calm the bashfulness of the censors by depicting a tree. Theseus, almost completely naked, symbolized the struggle for the new in art; he is on the illuminated side, while the Minotaur, pierced by the sword of Theseus and timidly retreating into the shadows, personifies the broken power. Athena, emerging from the head of Zeus, watches over the scene as the embodiment of a spirit born of reason, symbolizing divine wisdom.

Schubert at the piano. 1899

In Vienna, the "peaceful" works of Klimt were admired, and he pleased the public by portraying the beloved composer of the sentimental bourgeoisie.

There is no art without patronage, and patrons for the "Secession" were found primarily among the Jewish families of the Viennese bourgeoisie: Karl Wittgenstein, a steel magnate, Fritz Werndorfer, a textile magnate, as well as the Knips and Lederer families, who supported precisely Art Nouveau. All of them were among those who commissioned paintings by Klimt, and he specialized in portraits of their wives.

Portrait of Sonya Knips. 1898

The portrait of a young lady from society expresses the indifference and aloofness characteristic of all fatal women since that time.

The portrait of Sonya Knips was the first in this "gallery of wives". The Knips family was associated with the iron and steel industry and banking. Josef Hofmann designed their house, and Klimt painted a number of paintings, including in 1898 a portrait of Sonia in the center of the living room. The portrait combines several styles. It is well known that Klimt bowed to Makart’s hyperbole, and the pose of Sonia Knips indicates the influence of the creator of the portrait of the famous Burgtheater actress Charlotte Voltaire as Messalina, which manifests itself, for example, in the asymmetric position of the figure and in the accentuation of the silhouette. On the other hand, the interpretation of the dress, which is completely uncharacteristic for Klimt, is reminiscent of Whistler's light crate. The proud, reserved expression that Klimt gave to this society lady is typical of the artist; since then, it has reappeared again and again in his fatal women.

Nuda Veritas (The Naked Truth). 1899

This true woman, two meters tall, expressive and provocative in her nakedness, embarrassed and teased the Viennese public. Only her pubic hair was enough to declare war on the classic ideal of beauty.

One of the most popular ideas of the fin de siecle (end of the century) was the dominance of women over men. The theme of "struggle of the sexes" swept the salons; artists and intellectuals also took part in the discussion. Pallas Athena, painted by Klimt in 1898, was the first image in his gallery of "superwomen": with her armor and weapons, Athena is sure of victory, she subdues the man, and possibly the entire male sex. Some of the elements that appear in this picture will be fundamental in Klimt's further work: for example, the use of gold and the transformation of the body into an ornament, and the ornament into a body. Klimt continued to work with the external form, in contrast to the younger generation of Expressionists, who were looking for immediate penetration into the soul. Klimt's visual language took both male and female symbols from the world of Freudian dreams. Sensual, eroticized ornament reflects one of the sides of Klimt's ideas about the world.

The eroticism of Klimt's work constantly provoked controversy, as in the case of three sketches for decorative panels for the Great Hall of the University, which were perceived as scandalous. In 1899 Klimt presented the final version of Philosophy, the first of these three paintings. The original version by that time had already been shown at the World Exhibition in Paris. Although she was well received by many critics and even won a prize at an exhibition, the educated public in Vienna made her the object of such a scandal, as if all Viennese culture had been trampled into the mud. Yet, apparently, Klimt wrote it only with the best of intentions.

Philosophy. 1899-1907

Men and women swim as if in a trance, not controlling the chosen direction. This was contrary to the ideas of science and knowledge prevailing among the scientists of that time, who felt mortally insulted. The work was commissioned by the University of Vienna.

“Although you cannot please all people with your actions and your art, you wish to please not many. It's not good to please the crowd." Judging by the outrage provoked by Klimt's Medicinal, he seems to have made Schiller's principle his own.

He perceived "Philosophy" as a synthesis of his ideas about the world, and at the same time as a search for his own style. In the catalogue, he explained: “On the left is a group of figures: Beginning of life, Maturity and Withering. On the right is a ball representing a mystery. An illuminated figure appears below: Knowledge.

However, the venerable Viennese professors rebelled against what they saw as an attack on tradition. They offered the artist to paint a picture that could express the triumph of light over darkness. Instead, Klimt presented them with an image of "the victory of darkness over everything." Influenced by the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and trying to find his own way of unraveling the metaphysical riddle of human existence, the artist turned their idea around to express the confusion of modern man. He did not hesitate to break the taboo on such topics as illness, physical decline, poverty - in all their ugliness; before that, reality was usually sublimated, presenting its most beneficial aspects.

Flow. 1898

Water women of Klimt with sensual expression yield to the embrace of the waves, their natural element.

Life and the erotic idea of ​​it have always been concentrated around the struggle between Eros and Thanatos, and these ideas completely captured Klimt. The allegory "Medicine", the second in a cycle of compositions for the University, again caused a scandal. The bodies, torn out by fate, are carried forward by the stream of life, in which, reconciled, all its stages, from birth to death, experience delight or pain. Such a vision borders on belittling the role of medicine; it emphasizes her powerlessness in comparison with the inescapable forces of Rock. Isn't Hygieia, the goddess of health, standing with her back to the human race with priestly indifference, more of a mysterious or charming femme fatale than a symbol of learned enlightenment? Isn't the captivating female bodies mixed with skeletons a direct illustration of Nietzsche's parable of the "eternal return", where death is seen as the highest point of life? In Philosophy and Medicine, Klimt expresses the Schopenhauerian point of view that "the world as desire, as a blind force in the eternal cycle, is born, loves and dies."

Medicine. 1900-1907

Klimt was condemned for portraying the helplessness of medicine and the power of disease. The public was deeply outraged, shocked, and the artist was accused of "pornography" and "excessive perversion."

The third work for the University, "Jurisprudence", was received with the same hostility; viewers were shocked at the ugliness and nudity they believed they saw. Only one Franz von Wickhoff, professor of art history at the University of Vienna, defended Klimt in a legendary lecture entitled "What's ugly?". However, the scandal provoked by Klimt was discussed even in Parliament. The artist was accused of "pornography" and "excessive perversion".

Jurisprudence. 1903-1907

Instead of depicting the victory of light over darkness, as expected, Klimt reflected the human sense of insecurity in the world around him.

It seems that Klimt interprets sexuality in terms inspired by Freud's research into the psychology of the unconscious. Risky attempts of the artist - oh shame! — were aimed at presenting sexuality as a liberating force in contrast to scientific knowledge and its limited determinism. Klimt was expected to glorify science, but instead he was carried away by a quote from Virgil's Aeneid, which Freud paraphrased in his Interpretation of Dreams: "If I cannot control the gods, I will invoke hell."

Klimt did not allow himself to be intimidated by harsh criticism and continued to go his own way. His only response to the militant opposition was the painting, which was first called My Critics, and after the exhibition - Goldfish. Public anger has reached its climax: the beautiful, naughty nymph in the foreground has put her butt on display for all to see! Marine figures lure the viewer into the world of sexual fantasies and associations, comparable to the world of Freud's symbols. This world has already been glimpsed in the Current and the Nymphs (Silverfish) and will be rediscovered a few years later in the pictures Water Serpents I and Water Serpents II. Art Nouveau liked to depict the underwater kingdom, where dark and light algae grow on venus mollusks or a delicate tropical coral body shimmers in the center of a bivalve shell. The meaning of the symbols brings us back to their undoubted prototype, the woman. In these underwater dreams, algae become hair growing on the head and pubis. They follow the flow in an undulating movement, so characteristic of the Modern. With languid resistance, they yield to the embrace of the sea element, just as Danae is open to Zeus, penetrating into her in the form of golden rain.

Nymphs (Silver fish). OK. 1899

These maritime images pave the way through the labyrinth of sexual allusions recognizable in Freud's world of symbols.

Judith I. 1901

The association with sexuality and mortality, Eros and Thanatos attracted at that time not only Klimt and Freud, but the whole of Europe; the quivering audience listened to the presentation of the bloody passion of Clytemnestra in the opera by Richard Strauss.

Portraits of ladies from society gave Klimt material independence. Thus, he was not obliged to cater to public tastes or to see how his carefully thought out and brilliantly executed works were trampled into the dirt. He believed that his paintings could be redeemed for the same amount for which they were purchased. He explained to the Viennese journalist Bertha Zuckerkandl: “The main reasons why I decided to ask for the paintings back to me ... are not caused by irritation at various attacks ... they could arise in myself. All the attacks of criticism hardly touched me at that time, and besides, it was impossible to take away the happiness that I experienced while working on these works. In general, I am very insensitive to attacks. But I become much more sensitive if I understand that someone who commissioned my work is unhappy with it. As in the case when paintings are covered up. In the end, the government agreed to have the industrialist August Lederer buy Philosophy for a fraction of the original price. In 1907, Koloman Moser acquired Medicine and Jurisprudence. In an attempt to save the paintings during World War II, they were moved to Immendorf Castle in southern Austria; On May 5, 1945, the castle and everything that was stored in it were destroyed in a fire during the retreat of the SS troops. Today, some idea of ​​​​the work that once caused such public outrage can be obtained from black-and-white photographs and good a colored copy of the Goddess Hygieia, the central figure of Medicine. There is also a “colourful” comment by Ludwig Hevesy: “Let the eye pass to the two side pictures, Philosophy and Medicine: a magical symphony in green, an inspiring overture in red, a purely decorative piece in red juice on both. Jurisprudence is dominated by black and gold, unreal colors; and at the same time the line acquires meaning, and the form becomes monumental.

Klimt's work arose in the struggle between Eros and Thanatos, denying the basic laws of bourgeois society. In Philosophy, he depicted the triumph of darkness over light, contrary to conventional wisdom. In Medicine exposed her inability to cure the disease. Finally, in Jurisprudence, he painted a condemned man in the power of the three Furies: Truth, Justice and Law. They appear as Erinyes surrounded by snakes; as a punishment, the octopus squeezes the condemned man in his deadly embrace. With his images of sexual archetypes, Klimt wanted to shock a stiff society and “bring down the pillars” of morality.

Nothing has survived from this specially conceived group, except for some material evidence: photographs and copies from fragments of disappeared masterpieces. And also the bitter realization of the impotence of the artist, ridiculed by censorship. Klimt was never a professor at the Academy; but in front of those who mocked him, he held a mirror of "naked truth" - Nuda Veritas.

Judith II (Salome). 1909

Judith or Salome? Klimt clearly painted the “deadly orgasm” of a femme fatale rather than a portrait of a virtuous Jewish widow

“Time is your art. Art is your freedom,” Hevesy wrote on the pediment of the Vienna Secession exhibition building. Klimt wanted to be completely free, wanted to think and write independently of official orders, and in this he received support from several loyal patrons. Before the scandal with the University of Vienna, he met Nikolaus Dumba, the son of a Greek businessman from Macedonia, who was connected with the East and excelled in banking and the textile industry. The interior decoration of Dumba's office was done by Hans Makart; after Makart's death, Klimt became his favorite artist. It was to him that Dumba confided when he furnished and decorated the music salon in his palace. Klimt completed two paintings above the portal: the first depicted Schubert at the piano, while the second, Music II, depicts a Greek priestess with an Apollo cithara. The first is marked by nostalgia for a lost paradise, which is among a carefree company enjoying home music. The second is written in a completely different style and points to the Dionysian world of musical symbols. “In these two paintings,” wrote Carl E. Schorske, “bourgeois serenity and Dionysian excitement clash in the same room. The picture with Schubert shows the composer at home, surrounded by music, which is the highest aesthetic point of security and a correct way of life. The stage is illuminated by the warm light of the candelabra, which softens the outlines of the figures so that they dissolve into festive harmony... Klimt uses the technique of the Impressionists to place his historical reconstruction in an atmosphere of nostalgic remembrance. He presents us with a sweet dream, bright but incorporeal - a dream of innocent, pleasurable art in the service of a carefree society."

Portrait of Geta Felshvani. 1902

This was the Klimt whom Vienna loved, the Klimt who captivated even the most conservative public, rewarding them with more than applause. He gave the public more than they expected - the composer Schubert, the sacred object of her sentimental reverence. Klimt retained this attractive style for patrons from high Viennese society. Obviously, this manifested itself both in his Portrait of Sonya Knips, and in the tenderness of subsequent portraits of "wives": Gerta Felyivani, Serena Lederer and Emilia Flöge. However, the women in these portraits always have the same serene, dreamy expression on their faces: they look at the world and at the man melancholy and aloof. Klimt's "fear of free space" manifested itself here simultaneously with the majestic poses of the heroines. His eclecticism allowed him to create in the style of either Diego Velasquez or Fernand Knopf. From one he took the manner of writing the outlines of chins and magnificent hairstyles; from the other - the main characteristics of femme fatales. There is always something overwhelming in the seeming passivity of his models.

Portrait of Serena Lederer. 1899

Klimt knew how to please the prosperous Jewish citizens of Vienna who supported the Secession. He painted portraits of their wives, giving them boundless charm and a touch of arrogance.

Portrait of Emilie Flöge. 1902

Emilia Flöge was Klimt's great love and his companion until the end of her days. She ran a fashion house, and he designed fabrics and dresses for her. His patterns look as if they were carved from the ornaments of his paintings.

Nevertheless, Klimt not only followed the requirements of the customer, it seemed that he got rid of all restrictions and painted the way he wanted. A completely different type of woman arose in the paintings, dangerous and possessed by instincts, as in Pallas Athena and Nuda Veritas (Naked Truth). Appearing for the first time in a drawing for the magazine "Ver Sacrum", this character became known as the "demon of the Secession". The second version of the image - an oil painting (2.6 meters high) - expresses the breakthrough of Klimt's new, "naturalistic" style. The public was shocked and embarrassed by the provocatively nude red-haired woman: it was not Venus, but rather a life-sized cocotta Nini, a creature of flesh and blood, cutting ties with the traditional idealization of the nude woman in art. Schiller's quote serves as a comment that reinforces the provocativeness and ensures the subsequent rejection of the public: “Although you cannot please all people with your actions and your art, you want to please a few. It's not good to please the crowd." This first version, published in Ver Sacrum, was also accompanied by a quote from L. Schaeffer: "True art is created by a few and appreciated by a few."

Judith I and, eight years later, Judith II are the next incarnations of Klimt's femme fatale archetype. His Judith is not a biblical heroine, but rather a Viennese contemporary of his, as evidenced by her fashionable, perhaps expensive neckpiece. According to the publications of Berta Zuckerkandl, Klimt created the vamp type long before Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, who personified him, appeared on the silver screen. Proud and free, but at the same time mysterious and charming, the femme fatale values ​​herself higher than the male spectator.

Beech forest. OK. 1902

Klimt brought to his landscapes the same sensuality that can be found in his portraits. Here he turns to the intricate tapestry effect.The trees depicted by Van Gogh sound like fanfares in modern painting, while the sensual awe of women is felt in the trees of Klimt.

Pictures cannot be considered separately from luxurious frames. The first version of the frame was made by the artist's brother, jeweler Georg Klimt, by chance. The ornament in the picture was also transferred to the frame in a very popular manner then, proposed by the Pre-Raphaelites. The paintings were created under the influence of Byzantine art, which Klimt studied during a trip to Ravenna. The intended contrast between the three-dimensional plasticity of a finely drawn and softly painted face and the two-dimensional surface of the ornament is a distinctive feature of these paintings. The "photomontage effect" enhances their charm.

Without a doubt, Klimt found in Judith a generalizing symbol of the justice that a woman does over a man who atones for his guilt by death. To save her people, Judith seduced the enemy commander Holofern and cut off his head. The Old Testament heroine — a fine example of courage and determination, serving as an ideal — becomes Klimt’s “castering” woman… In this biblical figure, Eros and Death are united in a familiar union, which the fin de siecle (the end of the century) found so intriguing . Another example of a "castrating" woman, shamelessly embodying the most vicious fantasies, was the bloodthirsty Clytemnestra, the heroine of Richard Strauss's opera Elektra.

Judith Klimt was supposed to irritate that part of Viennese society (otherwise ready to accept his violations of taboos), which was called the Jewish bourgeoisie. Klimt violated religious prohibitions, and the audience could not believe their eyes. Commentators have speculated that Klimt must have been mistaken in asserting that this frantic, virtually orgasmic woman, with her half-closed eyes and slightly parted lips, was a pious Jewish widow and a bold heroine. Without the slightest pleasure, the biblical Judith fulfilled the terrible mission entrusted to her by heaven, and cut off the head of Holofernes, the leader of the Assyrian army. The people were sure that Klimt must have been referring to Salome, the quintessential fin de femme fatale who had already captivated so many artists and thinkers, from Gustave Moreau to Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley, Franz von Stuck and Max Klinger. And the picture "Judith" from the best of intentions was constantly called "Salome" in catalogs and magazines. It remains unknown whether Klimt attributed the features of Salome to his Judith; but whatever his intentions, the result was the most eloquent depiction of Eros and the fantasies of the artist's contemporary femme fatale.

Goldfish. 1901 - 1902

This painting is Klimt's response to sharp criticism of his faculty paintings. Entitled at first "Mem to the critics," the picture shows in the foreground an amazing, nimble naiad, who frankly put her beautiful ass on display.

But Klimt was not only a connoisseur of femme fatales. While his writings for the Great Hall of the University were still causing wide resonance, he began to "cultivate his garden" like Candide. Klimt turned to landscape painting, taking the landscapes of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists as a starting point. One can find sufficient reason to believe that Monet served as a model for some of Klimt's early landscapes, such as the Swamp (1900) or the Tall Poplars II (1903). However, as a landscape painter, Klimt offers a stable synthesis of Impressionism and Symbolism. The outlines of the strokes are destroyed (this is reminiscent of the Impressionists), but the schematic interpretation of the surface often indicates the influence of the East, typical of Art Nouveau. Unlike the Impressionists, Klimt is not fond of the image of water, as well as the play of chiaroscuro. As in his portraits, in landscapes he seems to make mosaics, combining naturalism with schematism. This becomes apparent when comparing such paintings as After the Rain, Nymphs or the Portrait of Emilia Flöge with the Beech Forest. In landscapes, as well as in portraits and allegories, figures and forms appear as if against a background of planar ornamentation.

Forest scenes such as the Beech Forest are like tapestries in which Klimt brings a sense of rhythm, creating a repeating pattern by grouping vertical and horizontal lines. Van Gogh fought desperately for the victory of modern painting, while Klimt was more of a silent reaper whose sensuous gleam of landscapes is enhanced by ornamental and symbolic meaning. A variety of mosaic pieces that filled the horizon and destroyed free space helped him get rid of the "fear of free space."

The fact that there is not even a hint of the presence of people in his landscapes helps us understand that Klimt really perceived landscapes as living beings. The artist's attitude to landscapes is as peculiar as to women - the main characters of his work. Doesn't the dress worn by Emilia Flöge in her first portrait (1902) look like the fabric was cut from a forest landscape to fit the woman's body like a second skin? Klimt chose this dress to emphasize all the advantages of a slender silhouette; it is a little strange that this caused a new scandal in Vienna. Even the artist's mother expressed her dissatisfaction with the new-fangled dress, which, with ruffles and frills not yet accepted at that time, went, in her opinion, far beyond the bounds of decency.

In Klimt's portraits, dresses play no less a role than the models themselves. They skillfully serve to reveal the individuality of a woman, enhancing the perception of the face, neck and hands. As a classic example, Ingres can be cited, whose portraits are also full of sensual beauty. For both artists, clothing performed the same necessary function as the body. Gaetan Pico's statement about Ingres can equally be applied to Klimt: “There is nothing more skillful, more refined in the work of Ingres than the harmony of neck and necklace, velvet and flesh, cape and hairstyle; or the borders of contact between the chest and a deeply low-cut dress, a hand and a long glove. If in these portraits the women are dressed in any particular dress, it is because the light of desire emanates from them; they come towards us in veiled nakedness…”

Gilles Nere. Tachen / Art spring, 2000

Other jobs

01 - Golden Adele. 1907

02 - Frieze of Beethoven (detail: hostile forces). 1902

03 - Idyll. 1884

04 - Fable. 1898

05 - Kiss. 1907-1908

06 - Danae. 1907-1908

07 - Frieze of Beethoven, Wandgem. 1902

08 - Three ages of women. 1905

09 - Water kites 1. 1904-1907

10 - Girlfriends. 1916-1917

11 - Water snakes 2. 1904-1907

12 - Virgins. 1913

13 - Life and Death. 1908-1911

31 - Flowering field. 1909

32 - Malcesine Castle on Lake Garda. 1913

33 - Kammer Castle on the Attersee. 1910

34 - Park. 1910

35 - Poplar-giant, or an impending thunderstorm. 1903

36 - Pond in the park of Kammer Castle. 1899

37 - Church in Kasson. 1913

38 - Road in the park of Kammer castle. 1912

39 - Guardaboski's house. 1912

40 - Peasant house in Upper Austria. 1912

41 - Apple tree. 1916

42 - Flower garden. 1905-1906

43 - Castle Kammer on the lake Attersee. 1912

44 - Dancer. 1906

45 - Kiss. 1907-1908

46 - Love. 1895

Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) - Austrian painter. Gustav Klimt is one of the most prominent representatives of the Art Nouveau style.

BIOGRAPHY OF GUSTAV KLIMT

Born on the outskirts of Vienna in the family of an engraver. Graduated from the Vienna School of Decorative Arts. The early works of the artist consisted mainly of large frescoes for theaters and were painted in a naturalistic style. In the paintings depicting allegorical figures, executed by Klimt in 1890-1891 on the vaults of the Grand Staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for the first time the features that became the main ones in his work appear - a clear silhouette and a penchant for ornamentalism. After 1898, the work of Gustav Klimt takes on a more decorative, symbolic aspect.

Gustav Klimt was the leader of the Viennese avant-garde at the turn of the century. Being primarily a decorative artist, Klimt led the Viennese society of innovative artists "Secession" - a protest movement against the aesthetic conservatism and moralizing of the previous generation.

Klimt's best paintings are considered to be the artist's later portraits, with their flat, unshaded surfaces, transparent, mosaic-like colors and shapes, and sinuous, ornate lines and patterns.

Klimt's paintings combine two opposing forces; on the one hand, it is a thirst for absolute freedom in depicting objects, which leads to a play of ornamental forms. These paintings of the painter are in fact symbolic and should be considered in the context of symbolism as an expression of an unattainable world standing above time and reality. On the other hand, it is the power of perception of nature and nature, the influence of which softens the splendor of ornamentation in the paintings of Gustav Klimt.

THE CREATIVITY OF GUSTAV KLIMT

Among the most admirable works of the artist are a panel for the Burgtheater in Vienna (1888), a series of mosaic frescoes in the Pallas Stoclet, a rich private mansion in Brussels. By the end of his life in 1917, Klimt won full official recognition, becoming an honorary professor at the Vienna and Munich academies of fine arts.

Painting by Gustav Klimt "The Kiss". On the flower field, from the ornament and abstract forms, the silhouette of a kissing couple grows. The color of the picture is dominated by a golden tone interspersed with bright spots of wild flowers and a rich pattern of clothes. The erotic character is given to the scene by sensual lines, lush ornamentation and spicy color - a symbol of luxury and decadence. This style is often referred to as Art Nouveau. Klimt painted a large number of portraits, mostly of women, as well as mythological and allegorical compositions. Sketches of applied arts and mosaics by Gustav Klimt were a huge success, but the wall paintings created by the artist for the University of Vienna caused a scandal and were considered “pornographic” by art critics of the early twentieth century. Gustav Klimt died in 1918.

Secession (German: Sezession, from Latin secessio - departure, separation), the name of associations of artists in Munich, Vienna, Berlin, who rejected academic doctrines and acted as forerunners of the Art Nouveau style. The Vienna Secession arose in 1897 and united the artists of the Austrian Art Nouveau - "Secession style" (Sezessionsstil) - around the magazine "Ver Sacrum" (Ver Sacrum), founded in 1898. The magazine was also an organ of Austrian literary symbolism (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Rainer Maria Rilke). The association was led by the painter Gustav Klimt. The characteristic features of this style for painting were mosaic multicolor and sophisticated ornamentation, for graphics - the geometric clarity of the pattern with its general free decorativeness, for architecture - the rhythmic ordering of divisions, the laconicism of the decor, the rationality of compositional and constructive solutions. The masters of this style (Josef Maria Olbrich, Otto Wagner, Josef Hofmann, Karl Moser and other artists) were distinguished by their gravitation towards rectilinear ornamentation, which retained geometric rigidity even in the most complex combinations. In this regard, the “secession style” is sometimes called the “square style” (Quadratstill).

One hundred and thirty-five million dollars was paid at auction in 2006 for "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer", painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907.

In the opening and closing compositions of the anime series "Elven Song" by Mamoru Kanbe, the main characters of the series appear before the viewer in an interpreted form of the most famous paintings by Gustav Klimt: "Kiss", "Hug", "Three Ages of a Woman", "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" , "Water Serpents I", "Water Serpents II", "Danae".

Three Ages of Woman Water Snakes Danae

One of the most famous painters of the past is Gustav Klimt, whose paintings are in great demand today. Unfortunately, there are not so many of his works, and all of them have long found their place in the best collections in the world. But when a miracle happens, and his paintings are put up for auction, their cost is fabulous.

the beginning of time

The man whose name is familiar to every intellectual today was born near the Austrian capital, in the town of Baumgarten. Gustav, who was born on July 14, 1862, was the second child. His father was an engraver and jeweler, so he gave all his many children the first lessons in craftsmanship. The family lived in poverty, but at the age of fourteen the young talent enters the arts and crafts school. There, Gustav Klimt, whose paintings amaze everyone without exception, studied with such luminaries as Ferdinand Laufberger and Julius Viktor Berger. A few years later, the artist's younger brother, Ernst, entered the same institution. Together they painted portraits of noble citizens from photographs and sold for six guilders. This was their first independent earnings.

First steps in art

In 1879, the artist Gustav Klimt, his brother and Franz von Mach decorate the courtyard of the Vienna Museum of Art History, after which they receive their first serious commission. From the palace of Stureny ("Four Allegories") and the baths in Karlsbad, a special style emerges that will distinguish the paintings of Gustav Klimt from the works of other painters. Therefore, the trio of artists stop working together, and they each go on their own voyage through life.

Finding Your Own Style

The artist Klimt almost immediately received recognition from the demanding public. From the hands of Emperor Franz Joseph, he receives the Golden Cross for services in art after the completion of work in the Burgtheater. Therefore, the master is sent on a journey through the Old World, during which he visits Munich and Venice. This trip gave him a lot of impressions and inspiration for further work.

Having finished painting the main staircase of the Moscow Museum of the History of Art, Gustav departs from the academic manner of drawing. His special manner of performance has already acquired its finished form. In subsequent years, the artist Gustav Klimt, whose paintings every collector dreams of owning, becomes a member of the Union of Fine Arts. But in 1892, heavy losses await him: first his father dies, and then his brother Ernst. In 1894, Klimt, together with his longtime partner Franz Match, decorated the University of Vienna, before Gustav worked on the halls of the Hungarian Esterhazy castle.

Recognition in life

Work on the interiors of the premises, in particular the execution of allegorical images, three faculties "Philosophy", "Jurisprudence" and "Medicine" prompted the artist to draw canvases. He founds the "Secession" in Vienna and becomes its president, writes his first landscapes, is fond of expressionism. The paintings of Gustav Klimt of that period are distinguished by their love for mosaics and ornamental forms. This is a distinctive feature of the master's work in the future.

Gustav Klimt, whose paintings were awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris (painting "Philosophy"), creates Beethoven frescoes. This work of his, completed in 1902, was actively discussed by the public, and Rodin admired it. The master goes on a trip to Italy, becomes in demand, they listen to him. In 1908, the artist organized his own exhibition, where he presented sixteen paintings. Two of them were immediately acquired by reputable institutions - the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Austrian State Gallery.

In Paris, which Klimt visited in 1909, he got acquainted with the work of Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Munch, Bonnart. A year later, he takes part in the ninth painting "Death and Life", which was highly appreciated at the 1911 World Exhibition in Rome. After her, the artist again goes on a trip to Europe.

The last years of the life of the great painter

Despite the love of the public, the work of Gustav Klimt was criticized by the expressionists. After the death of his mother in 1915, the artist increasingly chose dark palette colors. He continues to take part in the most prestigious exhibitions in the world, becomes an honorary member of the Academy of Arts in Munich and Vienna, writes masterpiece paintings. The artist dies from a heart attack on February 6, 1918, leaving a large number of unfinished works. After him, other great painters of that time also die.

"Kiss" by Gustav Klimt - the most famous painting of the artist

This work is rightfully considered one of the best among the master's legacy. It was created in 1907 and immediately after the presentation was bought by the government of Austria-Hungary. The emotional, dazzlingly bright "Kiss" by Gustav Klimt is recognized as the most expressive image in the history of twentieth-century painting. What is special about her?

On the canvas there are various types of patterns: scatterings of variegated flowers, running curls, a checkerboard motif of black, white and green rectangles, ribbon arabesques, twisting spirals. Abstraction of fragments of naturalistically interpreted figures, bizarre ornaments looks simply luxurious on a golden background. The couple, which is depicted in the center, embraced and merged in a passionate kiss. Mosaic clothes of lovers only enhance the effect of passion created by the master with the help of decorative details and their deep contrast with naturalistic elements. The girl's face, arms and legs are very realistically painted. But parts of the body are surrounded, and in some places completely covered, by planes with an abstract motif that matches the colors on the ground and the texture of the fabric.

The painting has the artist's favorite format - square. Gustav ignores the horizon and the depth of space, pushes reality and current time into the background. Thus, the kiss of a young man and girl in love acquires a universal scale.

Symbolism of the Kiss

Gustav Klimt, whose paintings always have a semantic meaning, also used symbolism in The Kiss. So, at first glance, the rectangles depicted on the clothes of a man have only a decorative value. But these are phallic symbols that personify the masculine principle. They merge with the feminine, encrypted in the motif on the woman's attire. These are spirals, circles and ovals, which can be considered artistic signs of the female genitalia. This union is harmonious and energetic, generates life and continues it.

The canvas "Kiss" is absolutely unusual and outrageous. Like all previous works, it had its fans and fierce opponents. But still, it is it that marks the highest point of the so-called golden period of the artist's work. The picture became the emblem of the Vienna Secession, bewitching with a golden glow, dimmed eroticism (after all, only the hands, feet and faces of the characters appeared open to the eye), obvious chastity.

Cherchez la femme, or Look for a woman

Gustav Klimt's favorite motif was women and their bodies. He liked to paint scenes from mythology, biblical characters, Olympian goddesses, nymphs and ordinary girls who became unearthly. Surrounded by golden light (many works of the genius had just such a chic background), they seemed to be the ideal of beauty, beautiful and seductive at the same time. As a true artist, he idolized the fair sex, its divine awe, sensuality, mysticism and femininity.

On his canvases, he painted naked women and only then dressed up their bodies in fabulous precious clothes. The mysterious shimmer of precious stones, flowing hair, the glow of silky skin and the thinnest gossamer dress created temptation, covering a half-naked body.

Fatal ladies of genius

The artist of the turn of the century absorbed all the conflicting opinions of that era. He was looking for an ideal and contemporary woman and depicted in his paintings. He painted not only real people, such as, for example, was Sonya Knips, whose portrait simultaneously expresses lightness, innocence, anxiety and thoughtfulness. Each lady depicted by Gustav is fatal. In the painting “Love”, the heroine’s face froze in sweet ecstasy, but shadows thicken in the background. After all, old age and death await the young man and girl. A striking example of such beauties are the following paintings: "Mermaid", "Goldfish", both versions of "Judith", "Water snakes". The work “Three Ages of a Woman”, which depicts a little girl, a woman in the prime of life and beauty, as well as an old woman, is also filled with deep philosophy.

It is interesting that the master was not married, although he had numerous novels. Perhaps he never found his ideal ...

Gallery of paintings by Gustav Klimt

(German Gustav Klimt, July 14, 1862, Baumgarten - February 6, 1918, Vienna) - Austrian artist. Gustav Klimt is one of the most prominent representatives of the Art Nouveau style.

Gustav Klimt painted symbolic compositions, portraits, and landscapes in the Art Nouveau style, subordinating planar images to a sophisticated ornamental rhythm, a fractional pattern of small color spots. Klimt is the leader of the Viennese avant-garde at the turn of the century, an active member of the Secession community of innovative artists. Gustav Klimt's best work is his later portraits, with their flat, unshaded surfaces, transparent, mosaic-like colors and shapes, and sinuous, ornate lines and patterns. Klimt's paintings combine two opposing forces; on the one hand, it is a thirst for absolute freedom in depicting objects, which leads to a play of ornamental forms. These works are in fact symbolic and must be seen in the context of symbolism as an expression of an unattainable world above time and reality. On the other hand, it is the power of perception of nature, the influence of which softens the splendor of ornamentality in his paintings.

Kiss

Music

Portrait of the pianist Josef Pembauer

Lady in a hat and feather boa

The auditorium of the old Burgtheater in Vienna

"Beethoven Frieze". Fragment

Love

Athena Pallas

Judith

Two girls with oleander

Music

Flow

Nuda Veritas

Three ages of woman

Article by K. Bohemskaya in the book "Art calendar of 100 memorable dates", M., 1987 .

Gustav Klimt is an Austrian artist, one of those whose work determined the artistic climate of Vienna at the turn of the century.

He was the son of the engraver Ernst Klimt, in his youth he attended a school of applied arts. As a young man, he was influenced by the pompous style of history painting by Hans Makart. But Klimt himself was distinguished above all by a penchant for decorativeness. Already in his early works, the bright brilliance borrowed from Makart is combined with ornamentality. He is also interested in portraiture. In 1888

he made a watercolor "Interior view of the old theater from the stage", where he placed 131 small portrait images. Klimt painted theatrical scenery, made illustrations for books, together with his brother and other artists created a cycle of murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

He had already attained a reputation as a well-known artist when, in the early 1990s, his style changed and acquired a pronounced symbolist coloring. The spread of the Art Nouveau style in Europe, or Art Nouveau, as it was called in Austria, not only touched Klimt, but turned out to be the most important factor in his development as an artist.

The taste for symbolism, expressed in England in the work of the late Pre-Raphaelites, in the graphics of O. Beardsley, in France in the work of G. Sea, fell in love with Klimt, whose works largely echo the works of these artists.

In 1897, the Secession art society was established in Vienna, and Gustav Klimt became its first chairman, permanent for many years. Such societies then arose in many European capitals, they contributed to the exchange of exhibitions between artists from different countries, the renewal of the artistic language. They opposed the official policy in the field of art and the personal tastes of patrons and generally contributed to the democratization of artistic culture.

The Vienna Secession organized several exhibitions a year, inviting artists, representatives of new art movements: in 1900, works by the Scottish architect C. R. Mackintosh and the Glasgow school were shown here, in 1902 - a sculpture of Beethoven Max Klinger, for the environment of which Klimt made a special frieze, in the same year - the art of the French impressionists and post-impressionists, the works of O. Beardsley, D. Whistler were also exhibited here.

Gustav Klimt created paintings that, in their artistic conception, were close to objects of decorative and applied art. The very impressions of reality served only as a pretext for the picture, but not as its content. Figures and objects were stylized in the spirit of Art Nouveau. Klimt's background was always planar, woven with small patterns. The contrast to this background was illusory, volumetrically interpreted parts of the image - usually the face.

Klimt depicted figures as elongated, often resorting to a sharply expressive profile silhouette. The staging of figures by Klimt is purely conditional, statuary; if it depicts two people, then this is most often the plot of a hug, a kiss, if there are several figures in the composition, then they all merge into one group, and the same conditional ornamental background spreads around them.

The models depicted by Klimt are always characterized by increased emotionality: they are nervous, tense, sensual, aggressive. It was his individual tone of perception of reality. It was revealed in the preparatory works of Klimt - his drawings. If during the life of the artist his drawings were little known and they were not given much importance, then in recent years Klimt's graphic heritage has attracted great attention from the public and collectors. In Europe, several exhibitions devoted exclusively to Klimt's drawings were successfully held.

If in the paintings and wall paintings of Klimt you can find a lot of “quotes * from the work of other artists, the eclectic origins of his style, the pompous and excessive stylization of the artistic language, are striking, then in the drawings, where the artist briefly recorded impressions about? nature and plans for future paintings, his insight is manifested. the ability to show the essence, character of the model, to create an expressive artistic image with concise means.

The immediacy and frankness of Klimt as a draftsman explain to the historian why he, as an artistic personality, had such a huge influence in Vienna at the turn of the convicts. Klimt was a very gifted artist, but he considered the goal of his work not to reveal an individual view of the world, but to create a certain style common to fine and decorative art. Therefore, he borrowed and himself created certain "clichés" of images and ornaments, which he constantly applied in his works and which make them so similar to each other. He tried to give his works a deep philosophical and psychological overtones. The vagueness of images and associations, embodied by Klimt. as if echoing the psychoanalytic constructions of his contemporary, the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud.

The obscurity of the symbols used by the artist, the emphasized ambiguity in the reading of all his compositions served to ensure that they did not lend themselves to one, precisely established decoding, but could be interpreted by everyone depending on his artistic experience. So, the reading options for his composition “Hope”, created in 1903 and depicting a young naked woman with an open womb, inside of which lies a child, can be ambiguous. Behind her is a skeleton and some monsters, reminiscent of the fact that the continuation of human life passes under the sign of death.

Among the most famous works of Klimt is the frieze he made in the dining room of the Stocklet Palace in Brussels, built by J. Hofmann. The architecture of the Stoklet Palace itself is a typical work of Art Nouveau, and the Klimt frieze corresponds to the style of the building. Byzantine mosaics made a great impression on Klimt, which is especially noticeable in the scenery of this palace. Actually, mosaicism was also inherent in his pictorial style - he made up entire surfaces in his paintings from separate pieces of color, all kinds of curlicues and ornamental fragments. In the frieze of the Stoklet Palace, he works directly in the mosaic technique: a colorful composition is made up of colored enamel, glass, ceramics, metal, partially gilded, ivory, mother-of-pearl.

The use of expensive, exotic materials in this frieze is also quite in the taste of Art Nouveau. On the background of the frieze there are trees with branches stylized in spiral curls, with leaves and birds. There are also images of human figures in the frieze - “Waiting” in the form of a female figure, whose dress is decorated with an ornament of curls and triangles depicting an eye. The face is depicted so similar to the Japanese that one might think that it is copied from the engraving of the then popular Hiroeige. The other two figures are merged together in an embrace, resembling in composition a motif that is repeated many times in Klimt's paintings.

If the frieze in the Stoklet Palace was appropriate and combined with the architecture and taste of the customer, then the decorative panels made by Klimt for the assembly hall of the University of Vienna caused dissatisfaction and were never placed in the place for which they were intended. The themes of the panel are “Jurisprudence*”, “Philosophy” and “Medicine”. The panel "Medicine" depicted different phases of human life, there were figures of a mother with a child, and a pregnant woman, reminiscent of the painting "Hope", I am an old woman, copied from one of Rodin's sculptures. The combination of the naturalism of the image with a complex speculative scheme determined the dominance of the plot and the idea over the artistry of the work. This was the reason for the failure of Klimt's plan.

In general, in the first years of our century, Klimt repeatedly comes into conflict with the public, which does not accept his works. In 1903, the Secession arranges a personal exhibition of Klimt, but after that the artist breaks with the association, which indicates his disagreements with his colleagues.

Nevertheless, although Klimt was not an even artist and was not always understood by his contemporaries, he had a great influence on the development of Austrian art at the beginning of the 20th century. Klimt was the first to introduce the notion of grand style into Austrian painting. The sharply individual manner of drawing inherent in him became the ground for the search for younger artists, future representatives of expressionism - Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.

Modern style(from French moderne - modern, another name: art nouveau (fr. art nouveau, lit. "new art"), Jugendstil (German Jugendstil - "young style") - an artistic direction in art, the most popular in the second half XIX - early XX century Distinctive features of the Art Nouveau style are the rejection of straight lines and angles in favor of more natural, "natural" lines, interest in new technologies (for example, in architecture), the flourishing of applied art.

Art Nouveau strove to combine the artistic and utilitarian functions of the created works, to involve all spheres of human activity in the sphere of beauty. In other countries it is also called: “tiffany” (named after L.K. Tiffany) in the USA, “art nouveau” and “fin de siècle” (lit. “end of the century”) in France, “art nouveau” (more precisely, “ Jugendstil" - German Jugendstil, after the name of the illustrated magazine Die Jugend founded in 1896) in Germany, "Secession style" (Secessionsstil) in Austria, "modern style" (modern style, lit. "modern style") in England, " Liberty style" in Italy, "modernismo" in Spain, "Nieuwe Kunst" in the Netherlands, "spruce style" (style sapin) in Switzerland.