Klimt, Gustav (redirected from Klimt)

Klimt, Gustav (gs`täf klĭmt), 1862–1918, Austrian painter. He cofounded the Vienna Secession group, an alliance against 19th-century eclecticism in art, and in 1897 became its first president. In the following decade Klimt became the foremost painter of art nouveau in Vienna. He created many murals for public buildings, e.g., the frieze for the Palais Stoclet, Brussels (1908). Klimt achieved his greatest fame as a portrait and landscape painter of exotic and erotic sensibility. Delineating symbolic themes with extravagant rhythms, Klimt was the quintessential exponent of art nouveau. The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, has examples of his work.

Bibliography

See his catalogue raisonné by F. Novotny and J. Dobai (tr. 1969); C. B. Bailey, Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making (2001); S. Koja, ed., Gustav Klimt: Landscapes (2002).

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Klimt, Gustav

(born July 14, 1862, Vienna, Austria—died Feb. 6, 1918, Vienna) Austrian painter. In 1897, after a period as an academic muralist, his mature style emerged. Revolting against academic art in favour of a decorative style similar to Art Nouveau, he founded the Vienna Sezession. His most successful works include The Kiss (1908) and a series of portraits of fashionable Vienna matrons. In these works he treated the human figure without shadow, conveying the sensuality of skin by surrounding it with areas of flat, highly ornamental areas of decoration. His later murals are characterized by precisely linear drawing and flat, decorative patterns of colour and gold leaf. He greatly influenced Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. See also Jugendstil.