Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

The Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was the quintessential exponent of Art Nouveau. Born and raised in Vienna, he attended the School of Applied Arts on a scholarship and spent the early part of his career as a decorative muralist, completing commissions in newly erected public buildings throughout the city.

In 1897 he co-founded the Secession, a group of artists rebelling against the conventional forces that dominated Viennese art circles of the time. The Secessionists launched a far-reaching program of exhibitions and publications, and Klimt became caught in a firestorm of controversy over his allegorical paintings that were considered anathema by his critics.

Factionalism within the group led him to leave the Secession in 1905, and Klimt achieved his greatest fame as a portrait and landscape painter of both erotic and exotic sensibility.

The Kiss, Klimt's most popular painting even in his day, is a totemic monument to love and one of the artist's most transcendent images.

(c)1995 Graphique de France