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 movie "Woman in Gold" featuring Helen Mirren, tells the story of one Jewish woman who took on the Austrian government to recover her family portrait which was stolen by the Nazis.

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 🐈

Klimt died in 1918, a victim of the flu pandemic which killed an estimated 25-50 million people.