This somber, accomplished charcoal drawing, "Portrait of a Girl, Head Slightly Turned Left,” 1879, executed when Klimt was 17, reflects his skill as a draftsman. Serge Sabarsky collection, New York City.
:Now recognized as a major figure in Twentieth Century art, Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was a complex and private Austrian artist who created heavily ornamented, sensual, often erotic images of elegant women and patterned landscapes. As co-founder and first head of the Secession in 1897, he was a central figure in the cultural life of Vienna's Golden Age and provided a link between Nineteenth Century Symbolism and Twentieth Century Modernism.
Anticipating the work of his peers, Klimt pushed the boundaries of artistic expression and evolved a personal pictorial vocabulary, based on sources of the past, to create a delicate, refined, highly evocative, expressive style. His work embodies the feisty spirit of
fin de siecle
Vienna.
Although he gained a measure of international renown, there was little American interest in Klimt in the decades following his death. Starting in the 1960s, his reputation began to grow, eventually boosted by the efforts of major collectors Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky. Today, Klimt enjoys a virtual cult status and his work is widely familiar in America.
Lauder and the late Sabarsky, co-founders of the highly successful Neue Galerie museum of German and Austrian art, assembled the largest and finest trove of Klimt works outside Austria. As Lauder observes, Klimt "is an artist of paramount importance in the development of Modern art. He is central to our museum's collection and mission."
This photograph, published in a book on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Wiener Werkstätte, shows a bearded, berobed Klimt seated on a chair designed by Josef Hoffmann in 1905.
Eight paintings and more than 120 drawings comprise the current exhibition, "Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections," which fills all gallery space in the museum through June 30. The art is augmented by a re-creation of the interior of a Klimt studio and vintage documentary material, including his painting smock. This first museum retrospective of Klimt's work ever presented in the United States was organized by Renee Price, director of the Neue Galerie.
Klimt was born in Vienna and raised there in a
fin de siecle
atmosphere of intellectual, cultural and aesthetic ferment, evident in the teachings of Sigmund Freud, the music of Gustav Mahler and the designs and furniture of Josef Hoffmann. The son of an engraver, Klimt was trained at home before studying at several art schools. His charcoal "Portrait of a Girl, Head Slightly Turned Left," executed when he was 17, reflects polished academic skills.
In partnership with a brother and another artist, young Klimt started his career as an architectural decorator. Riding the building boom along Vienna's Ringstrasse, they applied academic styles to artwork for the interiors of theaters, museums and other major public buildings.
In the early 1890s, Klimt was commissioned by the ministry of education to create paintings for the University of Vienna symbolizing medicine, philosophy and jurisprudence. His painting for philosophy, with its pessimistic imagery and blatant sexuality, was vehemently denounced by faculty members and the government. In the face of this challenge to artistic freedom, Klimt withdrew the commission, returned the advanced monies and never executed a public commission again.
