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Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter in the school of symbolism. He was a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement and a liver of the bohemian lifestyle. Klimt explored many subjects, but found his most profound fascination in the female form. He depicted women, as well as hundreds of other subjects in an array of mediums from sketches to paintings to murals. The blatant erotic elements of so much of his work garnered him immediate attention in the art world (and sometimes outrage, too) but in the present is remembered as an artist who re-envisioned the possibilities of art and the forms in which it can be experienced.

Klimt was born outside of Vienna in a small town called Baumgarten on July 14, 1862. From an early age Gustav, as well as all his brothers and sisters, exhibited a strong inclination towards the arts, yet Gustav's work stood head and shoulders above the rest. The son of a immigrants, Gustav grew accustomed to poverty, and this experience shaped his later worldviews. As a teenager, Klimt was awarded a scholarship to the prominent Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, where he underwent an extremely traditional artistic training that emphasized historicism. Klimt eager soaked in the techniques and styles he was taught, and became an ardent follower of a popular contemporary historicist, Hans Makart. Klimt's early career is marked by an academic, conservative style mirror the greats who he studied during his training. Upon completion of his education he, his brother and another artist formed a small troupe of painters, specializing primarily in large interior murals in public spaces that were, without a doubt, quite conservative.

After a succession of personal tragedies including the deaths of multiple family members, as well as a sexual awakening, Klimt became more and more inclined toward increasingly personal and expressive art. Shortly after these events Klimt, along with other artists, founded the Vienna Secession movement and remained an active part of it for over a decade. The Vienna Secession did not embrace a singular style or aesthetic, the members did not compose a manifesto, but embraced many styles such as symbolism and naturalism, while rejecting the conservative artistic values of yore inherent in historicism. The movement gained the support of the public and the government, and was given a public exhibition space. Engraved over the doorway of this building were the words: “to every age its art and to art its freedom.”

For his part, Klimt's paintings became more and more radical, with an explicit focus on erotic elements. Some of his public works of this variety caused quite a stir, but still Klimt persisted to pursue his own ideal. Klimt is most noted for paintings produced in his “Golden Phase” that prominent feature gold leaf designs and the pervasive use of that color. These paintings, while stylistically different from much of his former work, still maintain a focus on his favorite subjects. There are many paintings that share some of Klimt's most dramatic effects in our Abstract Canvas gallery.  Despite his success during this time, Klimt remained humble, saying, “there is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night.”
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