Gustav Klimt
A leading painter of Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. He served as the first president of the Vienna Secession and painted figures in decorative compositions using gold leaf. The Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art holds his "Life is a Struggle (Golden Rider)."
Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, on the outskirts of Vienna, into a family of gold engravers. He studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and, with his brother and others, opened a studio for decorative painting that produced ceiling and wall paintings for the Burgtheater and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. From his youth he won recognition for large commissions decorating buildings.
In 1897 he founded the Vienna Secession with young artists who had broken away from the conservative art establishment, and became its first president. His ceiling paintings for the University of Vienna drew fierce criticism for their bold expression. From the 1900s he entered his "Golden Style," using much gold leaf and gold paint, and painted the "Beethoven Frieze" and "The Kiss." A feature is the contrast between skin painted realistically and robes and backgrounds filled flat with spirals and squares. He also painted many landscapes of the area around Lake Attersee, where he spent his summers, on square canvases.
The Secession also held exhibitions introducing Japanese art and crafts, and some see the influence of Japanese art in Klimt's flat decorative quality. "Life is a Struggle (Golden Rider)" (1903) at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art shows a knight in golden armor riding on horseback, and was the first Klimt work acquired by a Japanese public museum. Klimt died in Vienna in 1918.
