Klimt – Life and Work

004 | GUSTAV KLIMT: LIEGENDE (RECLINING NUDE) | 1914
Pencil on packing paper, private collection
The Viennese artist explored the subject of women throughout the course of his
life, and drew a large number of nude studies. Klimt wanted to expose eroticism,
which had until then been concealed in art, and the problems associated with it.
This provocation frequently caused difficulties for him.

“To the age
its art.
To art its
freedom.”
THE MOTTO OF THE ARTISTS’ ASSOCIATION
IS DISPLAYED ABOVE THE ENTRANCE
TO THE SECESSION BUILDING IN VIENNA.
11

005 | GRUSS VOM TIVOLI (GREETINGS
FROM THE TIVOLI): POSTCARD
FROM GUSTAV KLIMT TO HIS NEPHEW
JULIUS ZIMPEL | 1909
private collection
“A masculinely handsome appearance:
the figure is of medium height, almost
stocky in its powerful evenness, but
simultaneously athletically supple and
slim; dumbbells lie around, and this
is what he looks like: like that hero in
Maupassant’s Notre coeur, who every
day flexes the steel-like muscles before
abandoning himself to the dolce far niente
of his dreams. The clothing is selected
according to the latest style, even slightly
emphatically modern. The dense brown
beard is well groomed, the hair on his
head, which would like to curl a little bit,
is carefully parted to the left and right,
the nose has a cheerful Viennese manner;
when he walks with a spring
in his step through the
alleyways with his coat open
and his hat leaning slightly
down towards his face, one
might easily think that one
is watching a spirited man
who feels compelled to go off
in search of his amusement.
12

006 | GUSTAV KLIMT IN SCHÖNBRUNN ON HIS WAY TO THE TIVOLI | 1914
Gelatin silver, private collection
Klimt was an early riser. On most days he walked to the Café Tivoli,
next to Schönbrunn Palace, in the early morning.

Gustav
Klimt
16
The old Austro-Hungarian Empire lay
in tatters when Gustav Klimt died – on
February 6, 1918 in Vienna, from the
consequences of a stroke. Klimt had lived
for just fifty-six years, just like his father,
and just as he had predicted for himself.
What an artist, what a character! A man
who throughout his entire life demanded
so much of himself, exacted the highest
of standards from his art, and wanted
to achieve nothing less than a cultural
revolution. A man who simultaneously
struggled with himself, doubted, and
loved to excess. Nowadays, Klimt is
indisputably an internationally recognized
artist; he has not been diminished to the
status of a “calendar icon,” even by the
millions and millions of reproductions
of the same works of art. It seems that
even bizarre gift items cannot inflict

“Gustav Klimt.
An artist of
unbelievable
accomplishment.
A person of rare
depth. His oeuvre
a shrine.” 2
EGON SCHIELE
The obituary of Gustav Klimt
damage upon his oeuvre. If anything,
Lovers made of porcelain in a music box,
rubber ducks in Klimt outfits and the like
appear to pay tribute to the quality of his
work. That it is possible for these two
elements to coexist is the achievement of
one of the early twentieth century’s most
important and remarkable artist figures;
an artist who exerted great influence on
his contemporaries.
008 | GUSTAV KLIMT | CIRCA 1887
Gelatin silver, Belvedere, Vienna
Klimt was very taken with photography as an
aid in the artistic process.
He had the opportunity for in-depth study of
and experimentation with the medium in the
photo studio of Karl Schuster in the building next
to his studio. It is likely that this is where this
photograph was created.
17

019 | MORIZ NÄHR: THE HOUSE IN WHICH
GUSTAV KLIMT WAS BORN, AT LINZER
STRASSE 247 IN VIENNA | 1918
Gelatin silver, private collection
018 | GUSTAV KLIMT: KINDERBILDNIS
(PORTRAIT OF A CHILD) | CIRCA 1883
Oil on ivory, silver frame, 4 cm, private collection
The house in which Klimt was born was situated
in rural Baumgarten, which used to be a suburb
of Vienna. The building was demolished in 1967.
Even as a child Gustav Klimt painted miniature
portraits after photographs, which his father
mounted in silver frames and sold.
24
Gustav Klimt was born into a poor family,
and grew up together with two brothers
and four sisters. His father was a humble
gold engraver with Bohemian roots, in
whose footsteps the first-born son Gustav
would come to walk. In this respect at
least, gold – the material and the color of
his life – was his inheritance. Throughout
his life, the inner circle of his family and
knowledge of the precarious situation of
his early years formed the unbreakable
bond that would give the questioning,
seeking, creative man Klimt the necessary
grounding in his life. All of the family’s
sons, Gustav (the eldest) and the brothers
Ernst and Georg, followed the path set out
by their father’s artistic talent by studying
at the school of arts and crafts of the
k. k. österreichisches Museum für Kunst
und Industrie in Wien (Royal Imperial
Austrian Museum for Art and Industry in
Vienna) and first earning a living in this
profession. The income of an independent
engraver was hardly sufficient to feed a
family of nine, however, so that all of
the sons were called upon to share their
meager earnings with the family. It
remains to the credit of the parents that
they supported their sons’ education and
talents despite their financial difficulties.
020 | KARL SCHUSTER: GUSTAV KLIMT
WITH CANE AND “GIRARDI HAT” | 1892
Gelatin silver, Wien Museum

033 | MORIZ NÄHR: GUSTAV KLIMT IN FRONT OF
HIS STUDIO AT JOSEFSTÄDTER STRASSE 21 | 1911
Gelatin silver, private collection

034 | ANTON JOSEF TRČKA: GUSTAV
KLIMT WEARING SMOCK | 1914
Gelatin silver, private collection
From 1901, Gustav Klimt also presented
himself in public in his blue painter’s
smock. Members of the Wiener Werkstätte
decorated the shoulders with embroidered
designs for him.
The success and recognition of the Künst -
ler- Compagnie’s work allowed the three
friends to move into a studio in Josefstadt
in 1892. “It was in Josefstädter strasse 21,
in a garden – an old, hidden garden of
which there are still so many in Josefstadt
in particular – where a low, small house
with several windows stood in the shade
of tall trees. One reached it by walking
through flowers and ivy. This was for many
years Klimt’s studio.
One first reached an anteroom through a
glass door. Mounted canvas frames and
various other painting materials were
stacked here, and it was abutted by three
other workshops. Hundreds of drawings
made by hand lay around on the floor.
Klimt always wore a blue smock with
ample folds that reached to his heels.
This is how he appeared when visitors
and models knocked on the glass door,” 7
as Egon Schiele described his impressions
of Klimt’s artist’s studio.
35

“I do not have the
time to become
personally involved in
this bickering. And
I cannot be bothered
to stand up against
the same stubborn
people time and again.
When I have finished
a painting I do not
want to lose several
months justifying it
to everybody. For me,
it is not important
how many people like
it, but who likes it.
And – I am satisfied.” 10
GUSTAV KLIMT
Wiener Morgenzeitung, March 22, 1901
47
050 | MORIZ NÄHR: GUSTAV KLIMT
IN THE SECESSION | 1902
Gelatin silver, private collection

Gold Rus
50
The gold ground that conquered Europe
from Byzantium in the fourth century
AD was reserved at first for portraits of
saints and rulers. Gold was considered to
be a symbol of the sun, and stood for the
transcendental sphere of the divine. Like
all artists, Klimt traveled several times to
Italy, accompanied by his painter-friends.
On May 3, 1899 he visited the Basilica di
San Marco in Venice with Alma Schindler
(married name: Alma Mahler), who was
nineteen years old at the time. Alma recor
ded the shared experience as follows:
“St Mark’s Basilica in the morning. Upon
entering: gray, with flickers of gold, when
approaching the magnificent mosaics.”
Klimt’s “golden period” looks certain to
have begun here. Klimt went to Venice
again and again, and in 1903 traveled to
Ravenna, where the uplifting effect of the
gold mosaics in the early-Christian church
of San Vitale left a lasting impression:
“Arrived safe and sound in the rain yesterday
evening – heavy rain all night – even
in the hotel room, down from the ceiling
– sun at last today – much squalidness
in Ravenna – the mosaics of outrageous
magnificence.” 12

h
053 | GUSTAV KLIMT:
SALOME | 1909
Oil on canvas, 178 x 46 cm,
Galleria Internazionale
d´Arte Moderna, Ca´ Pesaro,
Fondazione Musei Civici Venezia
052 | GUSTAV KLIMT:
JUDITH | 1901 | DETAIL
Oil, gold leaf, gold paint on
canvas, 84 x 42 cm, Belvedere,
Vienna
The association of death and
sexuality, of Eros and Thanatos,
fascinated not only Klimt and
Sigmund Freud, but also the rest
of Europe during this period.
51

The
Women
58
Klimt, the painter of women: each one of
his portraits of women is enveloped by
a cocoon of rumors, speculation, proof,
and suspicions about the painter’s erotic
escapades. “It is impossible to imagine
Klimt without women, who offer ed
themselves to him like a gift. They
encircle his work like an arrangement of
blossoming flowers. They are Viennese
women, girls from among the common
people and high-society ladies, Jews and
aristocrats. He knew them very well, and
lived surrounded by their scent. And
he became the herald of their glory –
one of the very few who discovered the
modern European woman,” the journalist
Franz Servaes wrote about Gustav Klimt
in 1912.

058 | GUSTAV KLIMT: MARIE HENNEBERG | 1901/02
Oil on canvas, 140 x 140 cm, Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg,
Halle a. d. Saale

063 | GUSTAV KLIMT AND
EMILIE FLÖGE | CA. 1899
Ferrotype, private collection
Emilie
64
Emilie Flöge, Gustav Klimt’s “life companion,”
who accompanied him through life,
was his confidante and lover and played a
very special role in his life. Perhaps this
was partly – or wholly – because she had
to share the artist with other women.
Klimt’s life was shaped by women – he
needed them, loved them, used them,
and paid them. He shared the flat in
Westbahnstrasse with his mother and his
two sisters Hermine and Klara, who took
charge of the housekeeping for him. It is
said that he fathered up to fourteen children,
had several affairs simultaneously,
and yet Emilie Flöge remained the only
true “relationship” of his life.
It is very likely that the contact between
Emilie Flöge and Gustav Klimt was
established through Klimt’s brother
Ernst. The latter had met Emilie’s sister
Helene in 1891, and it was not long
before Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge
also became closely acquainted. The
numerous journeys they went on together,
usually to the Attersee, deepened their
relationship as family members and

064 | EMILIE FLÖGE AND GUSTAV KLIMT IN THE GARDEN OF
THE VILLA OLEANDER IN KAMMERL AT LAKE ATTERSEE | 1910
Gelatin silver, private collection

Alma
76
When the revolutionary Secession was
founded in Vienna in April 1897, Klimt
– as its president – visited his colleague
Carl Moll, who acted as vice president,
almost daily. Many artists were regular
guests there, including Joseph Maria
Olbrich, Josef Hoffmann, and Koloman
Moser. Here Klimt met Moll’s daughter
Alma, who was just seventeen years old,
and he immediately developed a liking
for the intelligent, pretty girl. Alma, for
her part, was attracted to the painter, who
already had a reputation as a seducer,
and she fell in love with him. She confessed
her feelings and experiences to
her diary, which was not published until
1960. “Gustav Klimt became the first
president. I met him at one of these
secret meetings when I was just a young
girl. He was the most talented of them
all, thirty-five years old, at the height of
his powers, handsome in every sense of
the word, and already very famous at the
time. His handsomeness and my fresh
youth, his brilliance and my talents, our
deep musicality of life made us strike the
same chord. I was criminally innocent
of the realities of love – he fulfilled and
found me everywhere. He was tethered
in a hundred places: women, children,
even sisters, who became one another’s
enemies out of love for him.” 19
During a holiday trip, Klimt followed Alma
all the way to Italy. They met secretly,
and Alma was prepared to swear eternal
constancy to him. The lovers’ first kiss

077 | RICORDO DEL LIDO | 2 MAY 1899
Seated, from left to right: Alma Maria Schindler,
Wilhelm Legler, Grete Schindler,
Standing, from left to right: Carl Moll, Josef
Engelhart, Hugo Henneberg, Gustav Klimt
Ferrotype, Alma Mahler Archive, Philadelphia
was discovered by Carl Moll, and led to
severe discord between the two men.
Moll forced Klimt to leave, and the latter
had to promise to stay away from Alma in
future.
A thirteen-page letter of apology from
Klimt to Alma’s stepfather Carl Moll
dated May 19, 1899 – like the letter to
Marie Zimmermann, who was expecting
a child by him, written at almost the
same time – provides evidence that the
painter’s frame of mind was coming
apart at the seams: “Alma is beautiful, is
clever, is witty, she has everything that
a man with standards could ask for in a
woman, and to such a high degree, I think
wherever she goes, looks into the world
of men, she is mistress, ruler, perhaps
078 | ALMA MARIA SCHINDLER | CIRCA 1900

092 | OSKAR KOKOSCHKA:
KUNSTSCHAU POSTER 1908 | 1908
Color lithograph, 97 x 67 cm,
private collection
1908
Kunstsch
88
The Kunstschau, 22 an exhibition of arts
and crafts on the occasion of the sixtieth
jubilee celebrations of the accession to
the throne of Emperor Franz Joseph I,
took place in 1908 on the premises of
what is today the Wiener Konzerthaus.
Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann formed
the exhibition committee, which placed
particular importance on the permeation
of art and architecture. This exhibition
of more than 900 objects continues to
be seen as one of the seminal events of
Viennese Modernism. In his opening
speech, Klimt expressed the exhibiting
artists’ desire to bring together art and
life. He said that the artists had
“gathered for the sole purpose of this
exhibition, joined together solely by the
conviction that no area of human life
is too insignificant or lowly to provide an
arena for artistic aspirations, that – to
borrow Morris’s words – even the least
remarkable thing, if perfectly executed,
helps to increase the beauty of this earth,
and that the progress of culture is based
solely in the continuous advancement
of the permeation of life in its entirety
with artistic purpose.” 23

093 | KUNSTSCHAU 1908
Gelatin silver, private collection, far right: Gustav Klimt
094 | EXHIBITION ROOM NO. 22, DEDICATED
TO GUSTAV KLIMT | AT THE KUNSTSCHAU 1908
Repr. from Die Kunst, vol. X, issue 18, Munich 1908, p. 523
au
Koloman Moser designed the Klimt room,
the artistic center of the show, which
Klimt furnished with sixteen paintings.
The monumental icon The Kiss (Lovers)
was immediately positioned, though it
had not yet been completed, at the center
of the entire public’s interest. Following
a unanimous proposal by the art commission,
the k. k. Ministerium für Cultus
und Unterricht acquired Gustav Klimt’s
monumental icon for the Moderne Galerie
even before the end of the Kunstschau. 24
The writer and art critic Berta Zuckerkandl
celebrated the event in the Wiener
Allgemeine Zeitung with the following
words: “At long last an incomprehensible
omission has been redressed. At long
last the almost unbelievable fact that
Austria’s Moderne Galerie has until now
not been in possession of a representative
work by Austria’s greatest master has
been eliminated. The Marchet Ministry
has been responsible for the overcoming
of the ‘fear of Klimt’ that has reigned
for many years in certain well-meaning
bureaucratic circles.” 25 It is highly likely
that the exorbitantly high purchase price
– the sum was to be paid to the artist in
89

Lake
Attersee
96
Around the middle of the nineteenth century,
the Viennese discovered the Attersee
as a destination and refuge for their
summer retreats. The travel conditions
gradually improved, a train connection
superseded the arduous donkey ride, and
this resulted in a constant increase in the
number of tourists and the creation of a
large number of upper-middle-class summer
villas and hotels on the lake’s shores.
To this day, the results of Klimt’s work
can still be seen in the area around the
Attersee, and the majority of his almost
fifty landscapes were either created here,
or were inspired by this region.
Klimt first went to the Attersee in the
summer of 1900, having been invited by
the Paulick family. From then onwards,
he spent as much time as possible at the
“summer retreat,” which was as pleasant
as necessary for the bourgeois inhabitants
of the city. Many photographs document
the protracted rowboat excursions with
Emilie, relaxed games with Gertrude
(the daughter of his younger brother
Ernst and Hermann Flöge’s sister), and
snapshots and leisure activities during
the summer at the Villa Paulick. Klimt
attempted to coordinate the summer days
with Emilie as far as possible, although
she often made the outward journey
before him because he could not complete
his work in Vienna in time. In 1901, he
wrote to Emilie:

100 | RUDOLF VON ALT:
VILLA PAULICK IN
SEEWALCHEN AT LAKE
ATTERSEE | 1878
Watercolor, private collection
101 | GUSTAV KLIMT AND EMILIE IN A ROWBOAT,
SEEWALCHEN AT LAKE ATTERSEE | 1909
Gelatin silver, private collection

“Tell
Emilie
to co
112
On the morning of January 11, 1918 Klimt
suffered a stroke that paralyzed him on
one side. According to the records of his
sister Hermine, who immediately hurried
to his side, his first words were clear: “Tell
Emilie to come.” Emilie Flöge, his “life
companion,” the person in whom he had
established the greatest trust throughout
the course of his life, the person who knew
him inside out, the person who was always
supportive, even in crisis situations. Now
she was to accompany him on his last
journey. Klimt died on February 6, 1918.
Klimt did not leave a fortune although
he had always been able to command
the highest of prices for his paintings.
He had never had much time for saving
money, spending most of it on his
own living expenses and those of his
family; the cost of the materials for his
works of art were extraordinarily high,
and he paid his models comparatively
generously. Klimt’s relationship to money
and fortune remained a pragmatic one,
and he afforded himself few luxuries even
as he became increasingly successful.

me!”
118 | GUSTAV KLIMT: DAME MIT FÄCHER
(LADY WITH A FAN) | 1917
Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, private collection
Klimt was not a “prince of painters,”
not a potentate celebrating his fame in
intoxication and excess: “It remains a
nasty vulgarity to amass capital. One must
try to spend the money that one has
earned rapidly. If one could force all people
to do so, then all economic distress in
the world would surely come to an end.” 36
After his death, Emilie Flöge, his two
sisters and his brother George divided
among themselves the works on paper
and unfinished paintings found in his
studio.
119 | MORIZ NÄHR: GUSTAV KLIMT’S STUDIO
ON FELDMÜHLGASSE | 1918
Gelatin silver, private collection
113

129 | ANTON JOSEF TRČKA: GUSTAV KLIMT | 1914
Bromoil print, private collection

“Art has lost
so much;
humankind
has lost even
more.” 38
EXCERPT FROM THE OBITUARY FOR GUSTAV KLIMT
BY THE “BUND ÖSTERREICHISCHER KÜNSTLER”
(ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRIAN ARTISTS)
ON FEBRUARY 7, 1918
123