GUSTAV KLIMT
July 14 1862
February 6 1918

BIOGRAPHY

Austrian painter Gustav Klimt became known for the highly decorative style and erotic nature of his works, which were seen as a rebellion against the traditional academic art of his time. His most famous paintings are The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

Gustav Klimt was born on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 1862. His father, Ernst, was a struggling gold engraver who had immigrated to Vienna from Bohemia, and his mother, Anna, was musically talented, although she had never realized her dream of becoming a professional musician. Perhaps genetically predisposed to the arts, then, Klimt displayed a notable talent from an early age, and at 14 years old left his normal school to attend the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts on a full scholarship, no small matter considering both his youth and the relative poverty in which he had been raised.
While at the institution, Klimt received a conservative, classical training that he readily accepted, and he focused his studies on architectural painting. His early ambition as an artist was to simply become a drawing teacher. Klimt's horizons began to broaden, however, when his budding talent earned him various small commissions while he was still in school, and after his graduation in 1883, he opened a studio with his younger brother Ernst and their mutual friend Franz Masch.
Calling themselves the Company of Artists, the trio agreed to focus their work on murals and also to set aside any personal artistic inclinations in favor of the historical style popular among Vienna's upper class and aristocracy at that time. That decision proved to be a good one, as it not only won them numerous commissions to paint churches, theaters and other public spaces, but also allowed them to work interchangeably on their projects. Their most notable works during this time were the mural at the Vienna Burgtheater and the ceiling above the staircase at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. The group was honored for their achievements in 1888 when they received the Golden Order of Merit from Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef I.
In 1890, the Klimt brothers and Masch joined the Vienna Artists' Association, a conservative art group that controlled the majority of the exhibitions in the city. But although Gustav Klimt continued to align himself with the more traditional factions of the art world, he was soon to experience changes in his personal life that would send him off on a path all his own.

In 1891, Gustav's brother Ernst married a woman named Helene Flöge, and that same year, Gustav painted a portrait of her sister, Emilie for the first time. This first meeting marked the beginning of what would be a lifelong friendship and one that would have a meaningful impact on the direction of Klimt's later work. But it was the personal tragedy of the following year that would have the most significant influence on the course of Klimt's art, when both his father and brother Ernst died. Profoundly affected by their passing, Klimt began to reject the naturalistic trappings of his training in favor of a more personal style, one that relied heavily on symbolism and drew from a wide range of influences. With the passing of Ernst Klimt and the direction in which Gustav's style was heading, the Company of Artists was growing steadily more difficult to maintain. They were still receiving commissions, however, and in 1894 were chosen to paint murals for the ceiling of the Great Hall auditorium at the University of Vienna.
But continuing his quest for a more meaningful, personal artistic freedom, in 1897 Klimt and a group of like-minded artist resigned their membership in the Vienna Artists' Association and founded a new organization known as the Vienna Secession. Although primarily rejecting classical, academic art, the group did not focus on any one particular style, instead focusing its efforts on supporting young nontraditional artists, bringing international art to Vienna and exhibiting the works of its members. Klimt was nominated their first president, and he also served as a member of the editorial staff for its periodical, Sacred Spring. The first Vienna Secession exhibition was held the following year and was both well attended and popular. Among its featured works was Klimt's painting of the group's symbol, the Greek goddess Pallas Athena. In time it would come to be seen as the first in a series of works from Klimt's best known and most successful period.

THE SIMBOLISM

Symbolism grew out of and was codified in the works of the writers Gustave Kahn and Jean Moréas, who first used the term "Symbolism" in 1886. These writers rejected Émile Zola's Naturalism and favored the subjectivity of the poets Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, who both exercised great influence. Mallarmé hosted Symbolist receptions every Tuesday in his apartment; he was friends with many Symbolist artists including Paul Gauguin, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Odilon Redon, Gustav Klimt, and Edvard Munch.

The Symbolism of Gustav Klimt
In Austria, Symbolism is best represented by the work of Gustav Klimt (who was also associated with Art Nouveau), the progressive artist who entered the international Symbolist arena in 1897 by founding the Viennese Secession group. This move entailed a rejection of the salon system and other academic organizations in order to further the modern, more abstract direction, which also entailed more controversial content that mirrored Freud's recent findings. In fact, many historians have commented upon the rapid internationalization of the Art Nouveau style as helping to supplant that of the Symbolists. In view of the eclecticism of his multiple sources, his work has been described as the "last fruits of the Symbolist harvest." His contribution to Symbolism was that many of his works, though Symbolist in subject matter, aimed to unite the arts and crafts in a way similar to that of the Art Nouveau aesthetic, but different from the other Symbolist artists who were more interested in "art for art's sake."