Life is a Struggle (Golden Rider)

A large black horse seen in profile occupies most of the picture. On its back sits a knight wrapped entirely in golden armor, his lance held upright. The background is filled with fine dots of green and gold, and at the feet spreads a meadow with flowers of many colors. A band of gold leaf is laid along the bottom edge of the picture.

In addition to oil paint, tempera and gold leaf were used, giving the picture a quality between painting and craft. Gustav Klimt was also involved in the activities of the Wiener Werkstatte, which sought to extend art to the whole of life, and the idea of erasing the boundary between pure painting and decoration appears here as well.

In 1903 this work was shown at the eighteenth Vienna Secession exhibition, which became a retrospective of Klimt. At that time Klimt was under fierce criticism over his decorative paintings for the University of Vienna's Great Hall. As the title says, the painter's own stance as a fighter is overlaid on this work. But the setting of the fight is not an actual battlefield but a place like a paradise in bloom.

The work held by the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art was the first Klimt work to enter a public museum in Japan. It has become one of the signature works of the museum's collection.