Portrait of Gustav Klimt Photo sourced from Wikimedia

10 Best Facts about Gustav Klimt


 

Gustav Klimt, born on 14th July 1862, was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement who is often noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d’art. His primary subject during most of his career was the female body. 

Most of Klimt’s works are marked by a frank eroticism. He was among the most famous artists from Vienna and among the artists of the Vienna Secession, who was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods. Let’s take a look at some of the best facts about him ;

1. Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna to a poor family as the 2nd of 7 children 

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna in the Austrian Empire, as the second child in a family of seven children (three boys and four girls).  His mother, Anna Klimt, had an unrealized ambition to be a musical performer. His father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, formerly from Bohemia, was a gold engraver. 

All three of their sons Gustavus Klimt, Ernst Klimt and George Klimt and all of them expressed and displayed artistic talent early on in their lives. Their parents were poor, but he studied art between 1876 and 1883 in the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule, an art school in Vienna that is now known as the University of Applied Arts Vienna. 

2. His early work may be classified as academic

Photo portrait of Gustav Klimt Photo by Josef Anton Trčka Wikimedia

One of the top facts about him is Klimt did not start his artistic work by developing his own style, but rather started by following conservative academic teachings and admired Austrian academic history painter Hans Makart (1840-1884).

They could form a partnership with his brother Ernst and another friend named Franz Matsch and together formed a little company that specialized in architectural paintings, the subject he studied at the art school known as Company of Artists, and the team completed many commissions. 

3. He switched to his own artistic style, which even though received a lot of criticism was a success

He finally started his own style of art, which also earned him a lot of success, although he received a lot of criticism from conservative art critics. This was the most important and successful part of his career, and earned a huge fan base, especially from the younger generations.

He also received worldwide recognition for his works, for example  “Death and Life” (1911) received the first prize at the “International Exhibition of Art” in Rome in 1911, a world fair that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy. This and many shows how his works we’re rated in the world. 

Read more about him in Top 10 Things to Know about The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

4. Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Vienna Secession

Friederike Maria Beer-Monti and Gustav Klimt Photo sourced from Wikimedia

Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group’s periodical, Ver Sacrum (“Sacred Spring”). He remained with the Vienna Secession until 1908 and during this time he was one of the most important members of the secession. 

The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase the work of members. The group declared no manifesto and did not set out to encourage any particular style—Naturalists, Realists, and Symbolists all coexisted. The government supported their efforts. 

5. Some of Klimt’s painting have been sold for very huge prices

Klimt remains one of the most popular painters in the world, and some of his painting have been sold for very huge prices. The “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” and the “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” were both sold in 2006 for $135 million and $88 million respectively.

The latter was bought by Oprah Winfrey, the famous American television personality. And she later made a huge profit out of it when she sold the “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” to an unknown buyer for a whopping amount of $150 million US dollars. The buyer of the 1912 artwork was an unidentified Chinese man.

Read more about the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II here

6. His most successful period is his Golden Phase period

Klimt’s most successful period is his Golden Phase period. This was a period that he included gold leaf into his work, hence the name “Golden Phase” is used to define this period in his career. He already met his lifelong girlfriend, Austrian fashion designer Emilie Louise Flöge (1874-1952), in the early 1890s, and she was the model of many of his works.

Some of the most famous works that he created during the height of his career are called “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” (1907) and “The Kiss” (1907–08), and both presumably feature Emilie Louise Flöge. Most of his works during this time are among the most important works by him. 

Read more about his most popular paintings here 

7. Klimt was a notorious womanizer

Photo of Emilie Flöge and Gustav Klimt Photo sourced from Wikimedia

Klimt was a notorious womanizer, whose greatest pleasures were female beauty and sex: he is rumoured to have slept with every woman whose portrait he ever painted, and he had so many children, infact, he fathered at least 14 illegitimate children over the course of his life. However, only four of whom he formerly acknowledged.

Women were undoubtedly what he wanted in his life, and they filled both his canvases and his studio, where they lounged nude in abundance, alongside the artist’s many beloved cats, ready to freeze at Klimt’s command when a pose caught his attention. He loved women so much. 

8. Most of the works were destroyed in a fire on May 8, 1945

Most of Klimt’s paintings were destroyed by a fire. As many as 14 of Klimt’s works were destroyed on May 8, 1945, when the Schloss Immendorf, a castle in the small Austrian village of Immendorf that had been used as a safe storage space for looted and stolen art during the war, was burnt down by an SS unit.

Among the most devastating losses were Klimt’s controversial paintings for the University of Vienna ceiling, now preserved solely through preparatory sketches and a number of photographs. This works though lost cannot be forgotten easily. 

9. Klimt received several honours in his career

Klimt received several honours in his career including, the Golden Order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria in 1888, quite an extraordinary award for the then young artist. Gustav Klimt was also subsequently turned into an honorary member of the University of Munich and the University of Vienna as well.

Most of these honours, he received were for his exemplary works of art which include; Portrait of a Lady (Frau Heymann?) (1894), Music I (1895), Love (1895), Sculpture (1896), Tragedy (1897), Music II (1898), Pallas Athene (1898), flowing water (1898), Portrait of Sonja Knips (1898), Fish Blood (1898, After the Rain (Garden with Chickens in St Agatha) (1899), Nymphs (Silver Fish) (1899), Mermaids (1899) and Nuda Veritas (1899). 

10. Klimt died aged 55 on 6th February 1918 from stroke and pneumonia

Klimt died three years later in Vienna on February 6, 1918, aged 55 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary after suffering a stroke and pneumonia brought about by the worldwide influenza epidemic of that year. He was buried at the Hietzinger Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna. Numerous paintings by him were left unfinished.

The city of Vienna, Austria had many special exhibitions commemorating the 150th anniversary of Klimt’s birth in 2012. In 2013, the Gustav Klimt Foundation was set up by Ursula Ucicky, widow of Klimt’s illegitimate son Gustav Ucicky, with a mission to “preserve and disseminate Gustav Klimt’s legacy.” The foundation was formed in his honour.