Description

Gustav Klimt Study of ‘Lasciviousness’ (Beethoven Frieze) 1901

Museum Quality Artifacts – Private Collection Estate Sale

Gustav Klimt, an austrian painter, famous (and infamous) in his day, is one of the few classic painters to have become a household name. As evidenced in his very linear, stylized paintings, he was also a master draftsman. When he died, he left behind over four thousand known sketches, studies and color comps.

Klimt made different studies for ‘Lasciviousness’ from ‘The Beethoven Frieze’ because he used to make entirely new drawings for even the most minor variation of a character’s facial expression.

Is this the mindset that motivated Klimt’s drawings of women’s deeply intimate and psychologically complex moments – of sexual release, of self-pleasure, and delicate ages in life such as pregnancy, infancy, old age? Lee Hendrix and Edouard Kopp, curators of the Getty exhibition (with Marian Bisanz-Prakken of the Albertina in Vienna), propose a different way of looking at Klimt’s drawings of women. They write that Klimt’s drawings were a way to transport the viewer into the female world on their own, at an utter remove from the male world of action and engagement.

Klimt was convinced that the audience could understand the thoughts of the characters in a painting if the artist was determined and able to capture the right facial expression, pose and tone. He began his process for each painting by drawing models whom he cast for the roles of the characters in the scene.

The knowledge and muscle memory he gained from observational sketches of the live models informed the design of the floating figures in his imagination.

Many of Klimt’s preparatory sketches were very sparse – contour lines only. It is as if Klimt only continued to work on a drawing if he thought he had captured some spiritual essence in the first few marks. Most of his well-developed sketches and studies had an initial, emotional gesture to them. …and most of his seemingly-abandoned drawings weren’t as lively.

Quote by Chris Oatley about the drawing ‘Lasciviousness’ : I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was up to no good. Her expression – eternal, enticing and vile – has, for centuries, lured many men to awful consequences.

One of the studies is owned by the Albertina : Portrait of a Woman (Study for “Lasciviousness”, Beethoven Frieze, Secession, Vienna) | © The ALBERTINA Museum, Vienna

The artwork on sale is one of those other studies for the Beethoven Frieze : ‘Lasciviousness’

Size : 55.5 x 34 cm (paper roughly cut on left hand side – cut out of a large sketch book)

Handsigned by Gustav Klimt

Artwork is in very good condition

Comes with a COA from Rockefeller Plaza Center auction house in New York

Info on Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d’art. Klimt’s primary subject was the female body, his works are marked by a frank eroticism.

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna in Austria-Hungary, the second of seven children. His mother, Anna Klimt, had an unrealized ambition to be a musical performer. His father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, formerly from Bohemia, was a gold engraver. All three of their sons displayed artistic talent early on. Klimt’s younger brothers were Ernst Klimt and Georg Klimt.

Klimt lived in poverty while attending the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule), where he studied architectural painting until 1883. He revered Vienna’s foremost history painter of the time, Hans Makart. Klimt readily accepted the principles of a conservative training; his early work may be classified as academic. In 1877 his brother, Ernst, who, like his father, would become an engraver, also enrolled in the school. The two brothers and their friend, Franz Matsch, began working together and by 1880 they had received numerous commissions as a team that they called the “Company of Artists”. They also helped their teacher in painting murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Klimt began his professional career painting interior murals and ceilings in large public buildings on the Ringstraße, including a successful series of “Allegories and Emblems”.

In 1888 Klimt received the Golden Order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria for his contributions to murals painted in the Burgtheater in Vienna. He also became an honorary member of the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. In 1892 Klimt’s father and brother Ernst both died, and he had to assume financial responsibility for his father’s and brother’s families. The tragedies also affected his artistic vision and soon he would move towards a new personal style.

In the early 1890s Klimt met Emilie Louise Flöge who, notwithstanding the artist’s relationships with other women, was to be his companion until the end of his life. Whether his relationship with Flöge was sexual or not is debated. His painting, The Kiss (1907–08), is thought to be an image of them as lovers. He designed many costumes she created and modeled in his works. During this period Klimt fathered at least fourteen children.

Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group’s periodical, Ver Sacrum (“Sacred Spring”). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase the work of members.

In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to create three paintings to decorate the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. Not completed until the turn of the century, his three paintings, Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence were criticized for their radical themes and material, and were called “pornographic”. Klimt had transformed traditional allegory and symbolism into a new language that was more overtly sexual and hence more disturbing to some. The public outcry came from all quarters—political, aesthetic and religious. As a result, the paintings were not displayed on the ceiling of the Great Hall. This would be the last public commission accepted by the artist.

Klimt’s ‘Golden Phase’ was marked by positive critical reaction and financial success. Many of his paintings from this period include gold leaf. Klimt had previously used gold in his Pallas Athene (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907–08).

Klimt travelled little, but trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their beautiful mosaics, most likely inspired his gold technique and his Byzantine imagery. In 1904, he collaborated with other artists on the lavish Palais Stoclet, the home of a wealthy Belgian industrialist that was one of the grandest monuments of the Art Nouveau age. Klimt’s contributions to the dining room, including both Fulfillment and Expectation, were some of his finest decorative works, and as he publicly stated, “probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament.”

In 1911 his painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. In 1915 Anna, his mother, died. Klimt died three years later in Vienna on February 6, 1918, having suffered a stroke and pneumonia due to the influenza epidemic of that year. He was buried at the Hietzinger Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna. Numerous paintings by him were left unfinished.