MILAN – The art world today remembers the birth of the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. One of the greatest exponents of Art Nouveau (Liberty style, in Italy), he was the protagonist of the Viennese Secession.
. THE BEGINNINGS– Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, a district of Vienna, the second of seven brothers and thanks to his artistic skills, at the age of fourteen he was admitted to the Kunstgewerbeschule, (the school of art and crafts of the Austrian Museum for art and ‘industry), where he studied until 1883, dealing with various artistic techniques, from mosaics to ceramics, respecting the academic canons and the history of art of the past. In 1880 he painted the four allegories of the Sturany Palace in Vienna and the ceiling of the Kurhaus in Karlsbad. In 1888 Klimt received official recognition from Emperor Franz Joseph, moreover the Universities of Munich and Vienna nominate him an honorary member. In 1892, a few months after his father’s death, also his brother Ernst with whom he worked,THE VIENNESE SECESSION– In 1898 the first exhibition of the Viennese Secession was inaugurated, an artistic movement formed the year before with Klimt as president (composed of 19 artists, including Egon Schiele, Otto Wagner, Joseph Maria Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann); while the second exhibition will inaugurate the Secession Building, specially designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich with Greek-Egyptian elements. The supreme ideal of the Viennese secessionists was the total work of art, achieved through the fusion of all the arts. In 1894 the University of Vienna commissioned the artist to decorate the ceiling of the great hall on the Enlightenment theme of the triumph of Light over Darkness, to be developed on three faculties: Philosophy, Medicine and Law. The works are postponed for years and when Klimt delivers the panels, he is harshly criticized, enough to return the deposit they had paid him. Despite this, Gustav’s works are highly appreciated, especially by wealthy Jewish bourgeois families, who commission him to portray him thanks to which he becomes even more famous.READ ALSO: The 5 most famous works of Gustav Klimt LAST YEARS– Meanwhile, Klimt continues to exhibit his works internationally, also thanks to contacts with the other Secessions, of Berlin and Munich, of which he is a member: in 1900 “Philosophy” received the gold medal at the Universal Exposition of Paris. In 1903 Klimt went to Ravenna twice, where he met the splendor of Byzantine mosaics: the mosaic gold, echo of his father and brother’s works in goldsmithing, suggests a new way to transfigure reality and modulate the flat and plastic parts. with tonal passages, from opaque to brilliant. Following the crisis of the Viennese Secession, Klimt approaches the newborn Wiener Werkstatte (Viennese Laboratories), with whom he collaborates on the decoration of Palazzo Stoclet. In 1910 Klimt participated in the Venice Biennale and the following year he received the first prize of the International Art Exhibition in Rome for “Death and Life”. Shortly after a trip to Romania, he disappears on February 6, 1918, portrayed on his deathbed by his friend and pupil Egon Schiele.READ ALSO: The life and works of art of Gustav Klimt on display at the Mudec in Milan
. STYLE– Klimt bases his style on the line, soft and undulating, combining abstraction, synthesis and decoration with great harmony and naturalism; skilled landscape painter, he was sought above all as a portraitist of female figures of the rich Viennese industrial bourgeoisie whom he portrayed with elegant and languid images, similar to precious works of goldsmiths that reveal an intense eroticism and reflect the passionate temperament of the artist. Klimt’s woman is always suspended between the sacred and the cruel, often presented in frontal pose as an icon to be respected or feared, a dispenser of happiness, as in the painting The kiss, or cause of destruction, as Judith I. Also here the painter’s attention is directed towards the female figure, the incarnation of evil and the symbol of the femme fatale who leads her lover to ruin and death, according to a cliché of literature between 1890 and the first decades of the 20th century. A consideration of women in stark contrast to the struggle for women’s emancipation and for gender equality conducted by the “suffragette” movement in recent years.
