11 Things You Didn’t Know About Gustav Klimt

Knowledge can be gained at any age. After having a detailed study on topics there are things unknown to us. So, we at Abirpothi present before you the lesser-known facts about artists around the world.

Gustav Klimt

Whoever wants to know something about me as an artist which alone is significant- they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognize what I am and what I want.

– Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was one of the famous Austrian artists known for his decorative style of painting. He created a large number of works of art with sexuality and women as the main subjects. The Kiss and a series of portraits of stylish Viennese matrons like Fritza Riedler and Adele Bloch-Bauer are among Klimt’s best-known works. In addition to Klimt’s fondness for nudity and comfort in depicting sexuality and sensuality, his work was also challenging to understand and confusing in its explanation, revealing how he dived into the Symbolism style. This includes his other two paintings done for the Great Hall, Philosophy and Jurisprudence.

Gustav Klimt was born on 14th July 1862 in Baumgarten, Austria. Gustav was a talented artist from a young age. He attended the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and received formal training in traditional artistic techniques and methods. Together with his brother Ernst Klimt and a friend named Franz Matsch, he founded an artistic group in 1877. They completed multiple assignments and created murals for a museum in Vienna.   The female body is the principal theme in the majority of his works, including, Judith and the Head of Holofemes, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Dana. His works in the University of Vienna\’s Great Hall included those in philosophy, medicine, and law, all of which were sharply condemned at the time. Later, his artwork was taken down from the Great Hall\’s ceiling.

In addition to his numerous works with individuals as the primary subjects, he also painted landscapes. Even after his passing in 1918, his talent and contributions to the world of art have been acknowledged.  His paintings became the focus of psychological research. His creations deviated from traditional art forms, particularly those that were popular at the time. His paintings could convey profound meaning and represent not only his thoughts but also the culture, especially the one he was living in, thanks to his extremely expressive manner. One example is his painting Jurisprudence, which appears to show headless juries.

Klimt has achieved a kind of immortality due to the controversy surrounding the content of his works at the turn of the century and the mystery surrounding his relationships with his sitters, but the fates of some of his most famous works may have surpassed this long after his death. Several of Klimt\’s paintings entered the collections of Jewish connoisseurs in the 1930s, which, along with Klimt\’s status as a prominent modern artist, most likely contributed to their confiscation by the Nazis after 1938 and postwar placement, if not destruction, in state museums.

11 lesser-known facts about Gustav Klimt

1. Klimt was a notorious womaniser, whose greatest pleasures were female beauty and sex: he is rumoured to have slept with every woman whose portrait he ever painted and fathered at least 14 illegitimate children over the course of his lifetime – only four of whom he formerly acknowledged.
2. He was the founding president of the Vienna secession.
3. One of Klimt\’s most famous and expensive paintings, Adele Bloch-Bauer I and adele Bloch-Bauer II had previously been stolen by nazis during world war II.

   

4. He preferred a cosy style: In casual circumstances, Klimt wore sandals and a long robe with no undergarments.
5. Klimt is best known for the gold-leaf glow of many of his famous paintings. But his golden phase actually came well into the middle of his career.
6. The kiss was bought and exhibited before it was finished.
7. The method with which his most important paintings were reproduced was called collotype lithography.

   

8. He took annual summer holidays with Floge family to Attersee shores. There he painted many of his landscapes.
9. He once was commissioned to create 3 paintings in order to decorate the ceiling of the great hall at Vienna university. Those three paintings were jurisprudence, medicine, and also philosophy. Those paintings were criticized to be called pornographic.

   

10. He obtained golden order of merit from emperor Franz Josef I of Austria. It was for his contribution to murals painted in Vienna, especially Burgtheater.
11. Gustav Klimt never painted a self-portrait.