Collection: Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sketches, objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes.

He is best known for The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods. Early in his career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he began to develop a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticised as pornographic.

He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his "golden phase", many of which include gold leaf. Klimt's work was an important influence on his younger peer Egon Schiele. Klimt died in 1918, having suffered from a stroke and pneumonia.

Karl Hrachowina, Julius Victor Berger, and Michael Rieser taught him. His work was influenced by George Minne. His best-known works include Adele Bloch-Bauer II, The Three Ages of Woman, Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, and Insel im Attersee. He focused on landscape painting, religious art, and figure. He is identified with Symbolism.