Gustav Klimt

Art Nouveau (1862 - 1918)

Klimt was born on 14th of July in 1862 in Baumgarten near Vienna as a son of an engraver. In 1876 he joined the painting class of Professor Julius Viktor Berger at the vocational school of arts in Vienna. In 1883 he graduated his studies and established the “Künstlercompagnie” as an alliance of artists together with his brother Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch.

Among others in 1886 the alliance performed the scenery set at the theatre of Vienne “Wiener Burgtheater”. In 1888 Klimt was the award winner of the Merit Cross. At the same time he travelled to Krakow, Trieste, Venice and Munich. A couple of years after his father and his brother Ernst were dead in 1897 he established the “Wiener Secession” together with Joseph Maria Olbrich and Josef Hoffmann. One year later already they put some exhibitions. But in 1905 the alliance of Klimt resigned from the “Secession”. Therefore he established one year after the Austrian Alliance of artists and travelled to Brussels, London and Florence. He became the president of the alliance in 1912. In 1907 he published his first erotically drawings but already in 1909 his “golden period” ended and Klimt died on 6th of February in 1918 in Vienna.

Already during the turn of the century the works of Klimt constituted the center of the art of Vienna. Klimt affiliated different forms of the international art nouveau and created a synthesis of figures and ornaments painted very plane. Hence the paintings appear sensual and magnificent for the beholder.

© Hardy Schulz, Hamburg