Featured Artist: Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) is one of the more well-known artists in our collection - most famously known for his “Golden Phase” works - but for much of the 20th century his work was largely disregarded. 

During his lifetime, Klimt’s work faced a storm of criticism and charges of obscenity due to his detailed nudes - eventually forcing him to withdraw from public art commissions. Issues of Ver Sacrum magazine featuring his nude pencil sketches were confiscated on the grounds that they “endangered public morality”

Klimt was the son of an immigrant and a co-founder and president of the Vienna Secession, a group created to promote young, unconventional and foreign artists. Sadly, the group struggled to find venues to sell their art and in 1905 Klimt resigned. 

Like other artists in our collection, many of Klimt’s works were confiscated and destroyed by the Nazis who classed modern art as “degenerate” and the artists themselves “immoral” or “sick”. 

The systematic theft and destruction of his pieces by the Nazis not only deprived the art world of invaluable masterpieces but also sought to erase the identities of the Jewish individuals immortalized in his portraits.

Nazi Looting and the Erasure of Jewish Identities

During the Nazi regime, numerous artworks were confiscated from Jewish families, including several of Klimt's renowned paintings. Adele Bloch-Bauer, a prominent Jewish patron and Klimt's muse, was portrayed in two significant works. Following the annexation of Austria in 1938, the Nazis seized these portraits from the Bloch-Bauer residence. To obscure Adele's Jewish heritage, the Nazis renamed her iconic portrait from "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" to "Woman in Gold," stripping away her identity and heritage.

The Film "Woman in Gold"

The 2015 film "Woman in Gold," starring Helen Mirren, dramatises the true story of Maria Altmann, Adele Bloch-Bauer's niece. The narrative follows Altmann's legal battle to reclaim her family's stolen Klimt paintings from the Austrian government. After a prolonged court struggle, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favour, leading to the restitution of the artworks. This case highlighted the broader issues of Nazi art looting and the challenges of restitution.

Destruction of Klimt's Works at Schloss Immendorf

In the waning days of World War II, several of Klimt's masterpieces met a tragic fate. Paintings such as "Philosophy," "Medicine," and "Jurisprudence," originally commissioned for the University of Vienna's Great Hall, were stored at Schloss Immendorf. As Nazi forces retreated in May 1945, they set fire to the castle, resulting in the destruction of these invaluable works. This deliberate act aimed to prevent the artworks from falling into Allied hands, leading to an irreplaceable loss in art history.

 

Efforts to Recreate Lost Masterpieces

Modern technology has offered avenues to reclaim the visual legacy of Klimt's destroyed works. Collaborations between art historians and technologists have utilized artificial intelligence to recreate digital representations of lost paintings. For instance, Google's Arts & Culture initiative employed AI algorithms to reconstruct Klimt's lost pieces, providing contemporary audiences with a glimpse into artworks obliterated during the war. Google Arts & Culture

Conclusion

The Nazi regime's looting and destruction of Gustav Klimt's artworks represent a profound cultural and personal loss, reflecting broader atrocities committed against Jewish individuals and their heritage. The erasure of identities, both of the subjects portrayed and the artworks themselves, underscores the regime's intent to obliterate Jewish contributions to art and culture.

Ongoing restitution efforts and technological innovations strive to honour and restore the legacy of those affected, ensuring that the stories encapsulated within these masterpieces endure for future generations.

Klimt was an outsider who was very discrete about his personal life, he has been described as a male version of a “crazy cat lady” as he believed cat urine was the best fixative and covered his sketchbooks in it. He died in 1918, a victim of the flu pandemic which killed an estimated 25-50 million people.