Klimt and the secessionist movement in venice

SUBJECT: HISTORY OF ART IIPROFESSOR: EPHI FOUNDOULAKI

STUDENT: ELENA DIANA NASTASESCU

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IndexIntroduction……………………………………………………………………...2

Secessionist movements around the world………………………………………3

The French Secession…………………………………………………….4

The Munich Secession…………………………………………………...5

The Berlin Secession……………………………………………………..7

The Venice Secession……………………………………………………………8

Gustav Klimt (1886-1918)……………………………………………….8

The Secession…………………………………………………………...12

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...20

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………21

Books…………………………………………………………………...21

Online resources………………………………………………………...22

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IntroductionThe subject chosen for this study is the paintor Klimt and the secessionist

movement that he performs in Venice. The period studied is plagued by conflicts and

confrontations between two groups of artists, one of them are the ones that studied in

the Academia and that are following their criteria, and the other ones are the

secessionist ones, led by Gustav Klimt. The last ones are fighting against the orders and

the limits that the State is imposing to the artistic world. Furthermore, it’s exciting to

notice the course of events within the framework of each country, and finally to deepin

the topic that is actually interesting us from the begginig, such Austria, more

specifically Venice. The case of Venice is one of the most emblematic and interesting to

observe, because, even if the artistic movement wasn’t born here, it is the one with the

highest transcendence through the years.

I’ve chosen this topic because I find really interesting the research of a country’s

artistic history and learn about the social, political and economical changes that may

have caused the ruptures within the established and dominant movements. Also, this

period in art history is especially intriguing for me to understand and learn.

The main goal of the paper is researching the general situation of secessions

around the world to finish focussing on the particular case of Vienna. On the other hand,

it also plays an important role the leader of this break, Gustav Klimt, whose life and

artwork I studied because it is closely linked to the development of the events that

interest us.

Literature review was the method I used for the purpose of this paper. The

scientific articles I used as a bibliography were found using the Hellenic Academic

Libraries Link (HEAL-LINK).

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Secessionist movements around

the worldSecession is the term that is referred to various artistic movements of the late

nineteenth century, identified from the historical point of view with modernism, and

characterized by the rupture will of a group of artists who wanted to found a new art,

modern and free, compared to the official institutions, which they saw as too traditional.

The first secession was the split suffered by the Société des artistes français in

1890; a group of artists led by Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier and Puvis de Chavannes

who left that company and revived a previous institution, the Société nationale des

beaux-arts (founded in the environment of the realists in 1862), which went on to

organize annual exhibitions, alternatives to the official ones, in the Salon au Champ-de-

Mars (or Salon du Champ-de-Mars, located in the Palace of the Universal Exposition of

1878 or Palais du Champ-de-Mars).

In the years that followed, artists from several European countries, especially in

Central Europe (German and Austro-Hungarian Empire) took example of this attitude

and separated from local institutions artists: this occurred in the Secession of Munich

(Münchner Secession, split from the Münchner Künstlergenossenschaft, 1892) or the

Berlin Secession (Berliner Secession, cleaved from the Große Berliner

Kunstausstellung or Berlin Artists Association, 1898).

The most significant secessionist movement was the Vienna Secession (Wiener

Secession, spun off from Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreich in 1897), which

included Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and Koloman Moser.

Especially favored Klimt art nouveau style decor. The development of style lead in the

following decades (1920) to the forms of art deco.1

1 Antonio García Villarán (2011):«Antiacadémicos: Les Vinght, la Secesión de Viena y el “mundo del arte”»

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The French secession The Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was the term under which two groups of

French artists were known, the first ones some exhibitions in the 1860s, the second

since 1890 for annual exhibitions.

Established in 1862, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was chaired first by

the writer Théophile Gautier, with the painter Aimé Mijo as vice president. The

committee was formed by the painters Eugène Delacroix, Albert-Ernest Carrier-

Belleuse, Puvis de Chavannes and among the exhibitors we could find Léon Bonnat,

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Charles-François Daubigny, Gustave Doré and Édouard Manet.

In 1864, just after the death of Delacroix, the company organized a retrospective

exhibition of 248 paintings and lithographs of this famous painter who came under the

tutelage of the Emperor’s uncle - and ceased to mount new exhibitions.

In 1890, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was revitalized under the

government of Ernest Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin,

Carolus-Duran, Bracquemond and Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, and since then its

annual exhibition was known as the Hall of Champ-de-Mars, traditionally with the

opening a fortnight later than the academic Hall Champs Elysees, organized by the

Société des Artistes Français. In both societies, the president was a painter and the vice-

president was a sculptor. The first president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts

was Ernest Meissonier, but died suddenly, and the vice-president was Jules Dalou. The

second president was Puvis de Chavannes and the vice president was Auguste Rodin.

The nineteenth century French art is characterized by a continuous struggle

between educated artists according to academic standards and with the support of

government policy, and a growing number of artists who prefer to work individually

and in their own risks. Clearly, opponents of the official policy gained ground after the

fall of the Second Empire, and were instrumental in redirecting the French cultural

policy liberal positions. Therefore, the division of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts

in 1890 can be considered as the first manifestation of secessionist movement in

Europe.2

2 Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno (1962): Cien años de pintura en Francia: de 1850 a nuestros días.

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In 1903, in response to what many artists of the time felt it was a bureaucratic

and conservative organization, a group of painters and sculptors led by Pierre-Auguste

Renoir and Auguste Rodin, organized the Autumn Salon (Salon d'Automne).

Fig. 1. Poster of Salon d'Automne 1903.3

The Autumn Salon was pursuing a dual purpose: to provide outputs to young

artists and to discover to a popular audience the Impressionism and their artistic

extensions, fashion trend of the moment. One of his first successes was the exhibition

that made known the Fauvism in 1905. In the beginning, it was the center of several

commemorative exhibitions of artists of the time, highlighting Gauguin (1903) and

Cézanne (1907). Also they usually helped foreign artists by representing them.

The choice of autumn as filing season is strategic in several respects: not only

enables artists to present their small outdoors paintings realized during the summer, but

is distinguished from the two other large halls (the National and French Artists’) who

celebrated his exhibitions in spring.

The Salon d'Automne is also highlighted by disclosing all kinds of artistic genre,

from painting and sculpture to photography, printmaking, design, applied arts, etc. They

were particularly well representing foreign painters.4

The Munich secessionThe Munich Secession is a pioneer association of artists founded in 1892 as a

division of the Association of Artists of Munich to protect against paternalism of the

world of public art and conservative policies of exhibition as well as from Prince Franz

3 Source: http://www.salon-automne-franca-brasil.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Imagem1.jpg4 Web resource: http://www.salon-automne.com/en/ [consulted 29/01/2015]

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von Lenbach. It was a cooperative of artists who gave birth to New Artists Association

of Munich in 1909.

The Munich Secession was the first group of artists called so and was followed

by the Vienna Secession in 1897 and the Berlin Secession in 1898. He used as a symbol

Pallas Athena.

Fig. 2. The Munich secession poster.5

It was initially difficult for them to find a building where to organize their

exhibitions in Munich. The city of Frankfurt offered spaces to the Secession exhibitions

in the city and 500,000 gold marks, if the association was willing to change the name to

Frankfurt. The first exhibition was in 1893 at the Kunsthalle in Lehrter Bahnhof in

Berlin. The main supporter of the secession was Georg Hirth, editor of the Münchner

Neueste Nachrichten, and one of the centers of social and artistic life in Munich at that

time. Franz Brandl hired the architect of the Prinzregenten Street in Munich, a land

where the first Munich exhibition was held on July 16, 1893 where over 297 artists

exhibited 876 works.

5 Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/Muenchner_Secession_1898%E2%80%941900.jpg/250px-Muenchner_Secession_1898%E2%80%941900.jpg [consulted 29/01/2015]

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After an agreement with Francisco de Lenbach an international exhibition was

organized in 1897 with the Munich Artists Association. Subsequently, the building of

the art exhibition was entrusted to the royal court of secession, while artists cooperative

in the Old National Museum of Maximilianstrasse (now the Museum of Ethnology)

went to the Lenbachhaus.

During the "cultural cleansing" in the Third Reich and from the supposed

"corrosive influence on our national life," the Munich Secession was dissolved in 1938

but resumed its activities in 1946 after World War II.6

The Berlin secessionThe Berlin Secession (Berliner Secession) was an artistic association founded by

Berlin artists in 1898 as an alternative to the Association of Artists of Berlin was

marked state character and conservative bias. That year the official Salon jury rejected a

landscape of Walter Leistikow, who was a key figure among a group of young artists

interested in modern art development. Sixty-five young artists were the founding

members of the Secession.

Max Liebermann was the first president of the Berlin Secession, and suggested

that Paul Cassirer and his cousin Bruno act as business agents.

In 1901 Bruno Cassirer resigned from the Secession, so that he could devote

himself entirely to the Cassirer publishing. Paul assumed leadership Cassirer gallery,

and supported several Secessionist artists including sculptors Ernst Barlach and August

Gaul as well as promoting the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists French.7

6 Maria Makela (1992): The Munich Secession: Art and Artists in Turn-Of-The-Century Munich.7 Peter Paret (1980): The Berlin Secession. Modernism and its enemies in Imperial Germany.

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The Venice Secession

Austria, at the turn of the century was a country where change is most

commonly tolerated than encouraged. Its economic growth coming at the end of the

1880s marked the transition from an agrarian economy to a more industrially based

society. This type of change after a long period of semi-depression dating from the 1873

accident was frowned upon and encouraged by the State, banks and entrepreneurs.

Obviously meant increased prosperity and fits well with the progressivistic attitude of

the times, but less obviously meant the growth of urban decay and social disruption.8

1897 is a crucial date in the cultural landscape of the flamboyant Austrian

capital, in those years when it already turned into a highly sophisticated and

cosmopolitan city comparable to Paris, the artistic epicenter of the fin de siècle. As a

project of artistic renewal, it was trying to reinterpret past styles against the ravages of

industrial production that was undressing structurally and aesthetically the reality of art

and society of the time. Its first president was Gustav Klimt.

In the cafes and salon gatherings where Klimt participated alternated writers

such as Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler, Hermann Bahr, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Peter

Altenberg; the painters Carl Moll, Ferdinand Andri y Koloman Moser; the architects

responsible of the new Viennese urbanism Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann y

Josef Maria Olbrich; los músicos Gustav Mahler, Arnold Schönberg y Anton von

Webern, and a key figure whose influence was crucial in the evolution of all the creators

of the movement: Sigmund Freud.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)Gustav Klimt decisively influenced modern art and turned modernism into a

world-famous style. The pictures of this genius of painting, especially The Kiss, one of

the most famous paintings in the world, have become symbols of an era that marked the

8 James Shedel (1983): «Aesthetics and Modernity: Art and the Amelioration of Change in Fin-De-Siècle»

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beginning of a new era. In several museums and cultural institutions in Vienna you can

admire numerous works of Klimt.9

Gustav Klimt was born on July 14, 1862 in Baumgarten, a village near Vienna,

then capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was beginning to emerge as the great

financial and cultural metropolis in which it would become by the end of the century.

Son of a modest goldsmith who fought without much success to bring up seven

children, Klimt had to grow outside a hypocritical conservative and pretentious society

in which the financial and industrial bourgeoisie climbed the rungs of glory by leaps. At

the same time, the most prominent empire from Central Europe was getting weaker, but

it didn’t want to see its slope. Paradoxically, rose the socio-cultural phenomenon known

as Vienna 1900, from which emerged some of the most important artistic, intellectual

and scientific figures of the first half of last century. Gustav Klimt is undoubtedly the

brightest star in the constellation creative.10

The basis on which Klimt was based were:

1. The great symbolist tradition of the last century who understood painting as

a vehicle of expression of the allegorical subjects.

2. Those representative elements such as concept of ornamentation, with unity

of style and willingness to collect all the currents of modernism existing so

far.11

In 1900 Vienna a cultural concentration occurred in all areas. In literature and

the fine arts, architecture and music new trends appeared with unusual rapidity. In 1910

Vienna, with its two million inhabitants, was the fifth largest city of the world and the

cultural center of Central Europe. Gustav Klimt paintings reflected in his knowledge

and progress in the arts and sciences of this time of change and ruptures.12

Gustav and his two brothers, Ernst and Georg, started in the craft of jewelry,

which only Georg tracked while Gustav and Ernst soon demonstrated an unusual knack

for painting and drawing, which led them to enroll to the School of Decorative Arts.

Along with Franz Matsch, the Klimt brothers were the closest disciples of Ferdinand

Laufberger, a key piece of decorative design movement that in those years was in full

9 Wien Tourismus (2015): «Gustav Klimt y los orígenes del arte moderno»10 Klaus Carl (2011): Klimt. 11 Carmen Rocamora García-Iglesias (2000): «El secesionismo austriaco»12 Irit Keynan Rogoff (1983): «Vienna 1900. Edinburgh»

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swing in the renovation of the Viennese capital. Excited about the extraordinary

teamwork being made by the three young men, Laufberger was the engine that launched

the implementation of major commissioned works that soon catapulted them to fame: in

1879 they worked on the project to celebrate the silver jubilee of the emperors Franz

Joseph and Sissi; in 1880 decorated the scallops and ceiling of the meeting room of

Sturany Palace in Vienna and the main scene spa ceiling Karlsbad in the Czech

Republic. 13

In 1883, after finishing his studies, the three artists rented a studio and formed

the Society of Artists, featuring a workshop producing decorative murals for public

spaces. Since the rise of the architectural renewal that crossed numerous buildings of the

newly drawn Ringstrasse (the majestic ring road around the city, where the monarch

sent out the most sumptuous buildings) the trio of young artists received numerous

commissions, including paintings for the new theater in Vienna -the Burgtheater-

establishing Gustav received in 1888 from the hands of emperor Gold Cross for artistic

merit. It was part of the Künstlerhaus (House of Artists), where today's top creators met,

and that same year made the paintings for the Museum of Art History

(Kunsthistorisches Museum), for which they were given another important recognition.

The works of this period were due to the neoclassical academic tradition promoted by

the state, a historicist style that soon began to tire the disturbed Gustav, whose inner

demons began to surface.

In 1892 his father and brother Ernst died, and in 1894 collaborated with Matsch

for the last time in the most ambitious project that commissioned them out and for

which a huge controversy erupted: the famous paintings of the Faculties, conducted for

the Aula Magna University of Vienna, where Klimt developed the themes of

Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence. In these large canvases (430 x 300), Klimt

ventured first to break with the historicist language, both in form and content, and gave

free rein to his imagination inspired by the Symbolist movement recently he had

discovered, prompting the rejection of academic teaching waiting commensurate

representation to nineteenth-century positivism.14

We will proceed to explain these works:

13 Wien Tourismus (2015): «Gustav Klimt y los orígenes del arte moderno»14 Klaus Carl (2011): Klimt.

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1. Philosophy (1901): It provoked a protest letter signed by eighty-seven

teachers, which caused confusion in the context of Austrian cultural policy. In it,

Klimt exposed an image of the world, formed by an amalgamation of dark forces,

opposed by an illuminated face, representing knowledge.

Fig. 4. Gustav Klimt, Philosophy (1901).15

2. Medicine (1901): Resulted in such a scandal that the reformist project of

the Ministry of Culture, Wilhelm von Hartel, were hurt, withdrawing support from

Klimt and refuting ratify its payroll in the Department of Fine Arts. In the panel, a

series of floating bodies, representing the suffering humanity, condemned to futility

and death, while in the foreground appeared Higeia (Medicine), played by a female

figure incredible beautiful was exposed, impassive face a universal destiny that he

could not change.

15 Source: http://spe.fotolog.com/photo/30/43/9/yago_1805/1226584000686_f.jpg [consulted 30/01/2015]

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Fig. 5. Gustav Klimt, Medicine (1901).16

3. Jurisprudence (1907): Provides the figure of man as a victim of the

judicial administration maze. At the top, in an ideal plane, are the Truth, Justice and

the Law, but in the space below, these three concepts have materialized in three

furies aggressive, chasing the man, helpless before them. It's no wonder the general

reaction to the three works, by the gulf between the expectations of the assignment.

16 Source: http://spe.fotolog.com/photo/30/43/9/yago_1805/1226672565881_f.jpg [consulted: 30/01/2015]

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Fig. 6. Gustav Klimt, Jurisprudence (1907).17

Being branded as "pornographic" by critics, Klimt chose to withdraw and resign.

From these works full of veiled references ontological and cryptic symbols, Klimt

official sector detaches and becomes unintentionally an avant garde artist in

quintessential Viennese art and a founding figure of modern art. The paintings were

preserved later in the Immendorf Palace where they were destroyed by a fire caused by

Nazi troops during the Second World War.18

The SecessionHis obvious modernity, placed its author as the dominant personality in these

theories that were taking place. In 1847, the Viennese Secession is created, which

Klimt, will be the dominant personality and at the same time was created the Ver

Sacrum, the magazine of the ideological movement, the principal disseminator of their

esthetic and intellectual precepts. In the years 1898-1899, the real artist's mature period

starts.

On the 3rd of April of 1897, Klimt desire for independence and freedom was

cherished after his break with the official sector that, paradoxically, made him the

“fashionable painter” of the time: the creation of the Vienna Secession, an association of

rebel artists who struggled for a free of ties and conventions art, led by Moser, Hoffman

and Olbrich, and of which Klimt was the founding president. The aim of the association

is synthesized in the words of Hermann Bahr, spokesman of the group and an active

member of the Viennese literary vanguard:

We want to declare the war against the sterile routine, the rigid Byzantinism, all forms

of bad taste […] Our Secession is not a clash of all modern artists with the old ones, but a

struggle for the revaluation of the artists against the peddlers of art who act like artists but only

have commercial interest in avoiding that art can flourish. (Hermann Bahr) 19

The Austrian movement was defined by formal seriousness, severity and

elegance, all very geometrized and balanced, aiming called Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total

work of art", a term invented by Richard Wagner referring to an art that would combine

17 Source: http://www.ateneodemadrid.com/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/biblioteca/coleccion-digital/placas-de-cristal/418/41011-1-esl-ES/418_fullLightbox.jpg [consulted 30/01/2015]18 Eva Di Stefano (2008): Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary.19 Tatjana Pauli (2000): Klimt: la Secesión y el ocaso de oro del Imperio austríaco.

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all others. It was a very stylized and abstract art, which also attached great importance

to typography.20

Fig. 7. Poster of the I Exhibition of the Vienna Secession designed by Gustav Klimt.21

The Viennese Secession shared affinities with other contemporary movements in

Europe, as the Spanish modernism, art nouveau in France and Belgium, the modern

style in Anglo-Saxon countries, the Jugendstil in Germany and the Nordic countries, the

liberty or floreale in Italy, and the nieuwe kunst in the Netherlands. In 1898 the First

Exhibition of the Vienna Secession took place. The poster Klimt designed for the

occasion – a representation of Theseus and the Minotaur – up the winds of controversy

for being considered immoral, which was repeated from time to time throughout his

entire career. However, the show was a success, even in the public sector who took the

opportunity to spread a modern and progressive official image to hide their true reality:

Vienna fragmented territorial, social, political and cultural conflicts.

The following year opened its headquarters, a paradigmatic building built by

Olbrich who became the temple of modern Viennese art, on whose door reads the

phrase that summarizes the group's philosophy: Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre

Freiheit (Every time his art, and each art its freedom.). The imperial Vienna, with its

20 Web resource: http://www.vienayyo.com/la-secession/ [consulted 31/01/2015]21 Source: https://vienayyo.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/gustav-klimt-poster-de-la-1era-exposicic3b3n-de-la-secession-1898.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]

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contradictions and contrasts becomes, in the twilight of the century, a city light shining

with the same intensity as Paris.

Fig. 8. Gustav Klimt Pallas Athene (1989)22 Fig. 9. Gustav Klimt, Nudas Veritas (1899)23

Immersed in the creative frenzy led by liberal airs of the Secession, Klimt makes

two emblematic paintings are the detonator of a style that will achieve the highest

degree of sophistication in the representation of women: Pallas Athene (1898) and

Nudas Veritas (1899), in whose upper section we read a Schiller verse that the artist

makes his leitmotiv of his aesthetic stance:

“You can not please everyone

with your doing and your artwork

do justice to only a few

please many is bad.”

With that premise, Klimt falls squarely into modernity and consolidates its

aesthetic language against all odds, in his own words: “The important thing for me is

not how many like it, but who.”

22 Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Klimt_-_Pallas_Athene.jpeg [consulted 31/01/2015]23 Source: http://uploads4.wikiart.org/images/gustav-klimt/nuda-veritas.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]

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Fig. 10. Gustav Klimt, Beethoven frieze (1902)24

In 1905, after participating in numerous exhibitions in the Secession that reaped

great economic success and recognition abroad, Klimt decides to leave the group as a

result of a conflict generated around the Beethoven Frieze, one of the most ambiguous

and provocative works that they raised a new scandal. As part of an exhibition in honor

of the great German composer, Klimt performs three murals of large dimensions that

focuses on the struggle between good and evil, inspired by the Ode to Joy from the

fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony. With this pretext, the painter begins a

reflection on the essence of the human condition, in which eroticism appears, sensuality

and beauty exemplified by beautiful female figures as well as the counterpart of evil,

misery and death are present through grotesque figures, skulls and evil women, so again

was dismissed as insane and perverted.

From this event, Klimt definitely distances himself from public opinion and in

1907 starts its greatest sexual charge, known as “golden period” because of the

profusion of gold as a decorative motif that wraps its highly Baroque compositions in a

light flash in contrast to the expressive power of the characters, sometimes enveloped in

a tragic halo. The Kiss (1907-1908) is undoubtedly the iconic picture of the Viennese

painter who has been around the world reflected in all kinds of business objects for

consumption of idle tourists. It is a work of great visual impact that captures the

tenderness which cause the two bodies intertwined in a symbiotic embrace that seems

24 Source: http://illicitculturalproperty.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/beethovenfriezeklimt.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]

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almost mystical, and decorative profusion of clothes based on geometric and organic

forms in full color. The painting aroused general enthusiasm and was immediately

acquired by the National Gallery of Austria, making it the icon of Viennese modernism.

Fig. 3. Gustav Klimt, The Kiss (1907-1908).25

However, as perceived by many historians, not necessarily this is his best work,

nor the most significant. Parallel to the delicacy of Kiss, Klimt created his repertoire of

thrilling and captivating women who obey the concept of the femme fatale, so in vogue

in those years, with which the artist expresses their risk capacity in both compositional

solutions and its intrinsic meaning. Danae (1907-1908), which posed next to The Kiss in

the inaugural exhibition, is maybe one of the most daring, erotic and powerful

depictions of the history of modern art, and contains, in its cryptic symbolism, fusion of

seizure and beauty Klimt knew how to print in his female representations like no other

artist. Many are the mythic and iconic women that populate the universe Klimt

discussion in the dichotomy of woman-object and the femme fatale, a delicate and

impetuous, fiery and icy, tender and perverse, erotic and maternal time: Judith, Salome,

Eva ... Virgin, gorgons, mermaids, sphinxes, alternate lush canvases as a passionate

tribute to a passionate and feverish creative women who were the epicenter of his

creation and his love life – it is said that he had tens of lovers, and that at his death

fourteen children from different mothers appeared. Nevertheless, his great muse, Emilie

Flöge, remained with him until the end of his days. In parallel to his figurative painting

25 Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustav_Klimt_016.jpg [consulted 30/01/2015]

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way, Klimt displays the landscape, genre little known in his work, in which the

melancholy of his time and pace is palpable.

Fig. 11. Gustav Klimt, Danae (1907-1908)26

In 1918, forty-six years old and at the height of his career, Gustav Klimt died of

a stroke, leaving a legacy of one of the most fascinating, mysterious, thrilling and

purposeful works. In the distance we can see clearly that the artist, considered a few

decades ago as pure decoration and superficial, was a visionary who knew how to

penetrate in the light and dark of the human soul and realize its ontological intricacies as

few have succeeded. By endorsing the biblical phrase: “My kingdom is not of this

world”, Gustav Klimt breaks the barriers of tradition and exceeding the limits of reason

and conventional beauty.27

In the last eight years of his life, Gustav Klimt, breaks the golden symbolism to

evolve towards a radically new painting technique, full of Fauves history, in which the

color is enriched with a smooth sensuality.

The dynamic composition and ease in implementation, allegorical scenes

characterize this final period. Except for the play Adam and Eve all other (Life and

Death, The Virgin, The Child, The Wedding court) seem variations of the same cycle.

26 Source: http://uploads2.wikiart.org/images/gustav-klimt/danae-1908.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]27 Tatjana Pauli (2000): Klimt: la Secesión y el ocaso de oro del Imperio austríaco.

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Fig. 12. Gustav Klimt, Adam and Eve (1917-1918)28

Fig. 13. Gustav Klimt, Life and death (1910)29 Fig. 14. Gustav Klimt, The virgin (1913)30

28 Source: http://es.wahooart.com/Art.nsf/O/6E3TDB/$File/Gustav+Klimt+-+Adam+and+Eve(unfinished)+(1917+18)+.JPG [consulted 31/01/2015]29 Source: http://historicphotoimage.com/store/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/K/l/Klimt-008818.jpg_4.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]30 Source: http://uploads7.wikiart.org/images/gustav-klimt/the-virgin-1913.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]

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Fig. 15. Gustav Klimt, The Child

(1917)31

Fig. 16. Gustav Klimt, The Wedding

Court (1917-1918)32

ConclusionIn conclusion, during the time of Klimt, the ideals were distorted, and artists

were forced to work for an elite minority that was imposing their artistic tastes and

obliged the artists to have a specific artistic production according to them. Therefore,

the members of the Secession were pursuing to bring the applied arts to the level of high

art, make art for everyone to enjoy and understand (and that’s why they even did art in

objects as common as furniture, textiles, jewelry, postcards, glassware, buildings, etc.)

and more specially, rescuing the art from the commercial life.

[…] encourage, firstly, the artistic activity, the interest in art in our city and, once it has

been extended to the Austrian level, extend it to the whole Empire. (Gustav Klimt)

One of the goals of the movement will be bringing and spreading the Viennese

modern art. By looking at the paintings in the Secession, as they proposed, an almost

31 Source: http://www.klimt.com/documents/pictures/en/late-works/klimt-baby-1917.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]32 Source: http://www.painting-palace.com/files/260/25907_Bride_The_unfinished__f.jpg [consulted 31/01/2015]

21

provocative break with the classical forms can be appreciated. One of the recurring

themes will be women and eroticism, which scandalized classical society of the time.

We know of no distinction between high art and low art, art for rich or art for poor. Art

is a common good. (Ver Sacrum, Rilke)

Bibliography

BooksCARL, KLAUS (2011): Klimt, eBook.

DI STEFANO, EVA (2008): Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary, eBook.

GARCÍA VILLARÁN, ANTONIO (2011): «Antiacadémicos: Les Vinght, la Secesión

de Viena y el “mundo del arte”», Departamento de Dibujo de la Facultad de Bellas

Artes de Sevilla Santa Isabel de Hungría.

KEYNAN ROGOFF, IRIT (1983): «Vienna 1900. Edinburgh», The Burlington

Magazine vol. 125, no. 968.

MAKELA, MARIA (1992): The Munich Secession: Art and Artists in Turn-Of-

The-Century Munich, Princeton University Press.

MUSEO NACIONAL DE ARTE MODERNO (1962): Cien años de pintura en

Francia: de 1850 a nuestros días, Palacio de Bellas Artes, México.

22

PARET, PETER (1980): The Berlin Secession. Modernism and its enemies in

Imperial Germany, Harvard University Press.

PAULI, TATJANA (2000): Klimt: la Secesión y el ocaso de oro del Imperio

austríaco, Editorial Electra.

ROCAMORA GARCÍA-IGLESIAS, CARMEN (2000): «El secesionismo austriaco»,

Arbor magazine, n. 649.

SHEDEL, JAMES (1983): «Aesthetics and Modernity: Art and the Amelioration of

Change in Fin-De-Siècle», Austrian History Yearbook, volume 19, issue 01, University

of Minnesota.

WIEN TOURISMUS (2015): «Gustav Klimt y los orígenes del arte moderno»,

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23

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