GUSTAV KLIMT (Austrian, 1862-1918) was a symbolist painter (seeking to represent absolute truth symbolically through metaphor) and mentor of Egon Schiele, whose primary subject was the raw eroticism of female nudes. He was influenced by the flatness, spirals, swirls, patterns, and design of Japanese art, and he often included gold leaf that he’d admired from Byzantine mozaics. He found fame and critical success at a young age; visitors frequented his home, he was a lifelong bachelor with countless affairs (often with models) and fourteen children, and while in his twenties, he was awarded by the emperor for his murals painted in Vienna. Since I was young, I admired his work, but as I grew older, I found that it was his later work – landscapes of shrub-surrounded villas along the water, parks and lakes, or the trees of forests, with every little leaf or fallen leaf carefully rendered – that I found most awe-inspiring and moving.
Extra special thanks to www.art-klimt.com!
Read the comic book, “Brush with Peril”:
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