Gustav Klimt, Scanning the Horizon at the Villa Paulick Pier on Lake Attersee, 1904
This year Vienna extols with all kinds of honors the art of one of the greatest cultural agitators that has stepped on its streets, Gustav Klimt , painter and visionary, who hung up the academic brushes of fin de siècle art that had given him awards and renown, to roam freely through the capital as a standard-bearer of the viennese secession, shocking and fascinating in equal parts. Since last October, Vienna wears the Klimt colors to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of genius , overlapping one exhibition after another to closely scrutinize his work and existence, we are in the city of psychoanalysis for a reason.
And it is now when the Klimt year enters its apogee blowing out the birthday candles of the protagonist, who was born a July 14 , just like the one that passes through our eyes, a century and a half ago. However, surely Klimt would not have cared if he knew that he would become one of the most famous painters on the planet, a super star of brushes at the height of Rafael or Velázquez and that his famous 'El beso' would stamp handkerchiefs, cups and all kinds of kitsch inventions, even if it would have horrified him. Well, he only cared about one thing, his work, for which he was born, in search for the essence of modern man, and for which he lived very artistically, among Austrian models and landscapes, with a long tunic and sandals as his only uniform.
'Attersee', 1900. Gustav Klimt. At the Leopold Museum
Among the celebrations of the anniversary, and with the motto ' Gustav Klimt and the birth of modern art in Vienna' As a common denominator, there are not a few museums and art galleries that pay homage to the painter by adding, 'klimt' from private collections and international institutions to theirs. In addition to modernist routes through the urban layout of the city and samples about the other members of the Secession.
First of the kind was the Belvedere, proud owner of the largest concentration of paintings by the artist in the world , which since October 24 delights its visitors with some of the artist's great pictorial achievements such as ' Judith I', ' sunflowers' either ' Family' , brand new acquisitions, and the early ' Portrait of Sonia Knips' , but above all reigns ' The kiss'.
Our favorite exhibition is, without a doubt, the one at the Leopold Museum. Although Gustav Klimt is today remembered for being the author of pictorial icons of gold filigree and feminine curves, his scenery make up a high percentage of his work, an almost unknown delicacy for the general public to sink your teeth into. And it is in the landscape work and in the artist's facet as a traveler that the exhibition focuses 'Klimt personlich' .
'Menace of storm', 1903. Gustav Klimt. At the Leopold Museum.
Contact with nature, the Impressionists claimed when they were not yet the Impressionists, and with brushes at the ready and the horizon as a model, they banished study landscapes and they welcomed the palpitations of nature in its purest form. Klimt did the same, but in the Austrian way, spending his summers uninterruptedly for sixteen years on the shore of Lake Attersee, at the foot of the Alps and very close to the singer salzburg , accompanied by his mistress and muse Emilie Floge and painting landscapes. Canvases, sketches, postcards and personal letters , all related to the trips that Klimt made through Europe , his summer retreats and his love affair with Emilie; him as a person, as a friend, as a lover and as a painter, in this case as a portraitist of horizons. The lake house where he spent these seasons is being restored with its opening to the public scheduled for next fall.
Gustav Klimt posing naughty in 1902
They complete the Kunsthistorisches Museum , which has installed catwalks to admire the frescoes that Klimt he painted in his beginnings on the staircase of the institution, bringing the classicist beauty of the artist closer to the public, that he will no longer have to stick his neck out to admire them. The Secession Palace has done the same, making it even easier for the scrutinizing eyes of visitors to see the Beethoven Frieze with another walkway. The Vienna Museum, where the protagonists are the klimt drawings , about 400 to be exact, all of them a reflection of his modernist spirit. In addition to the posters for the Secession and some portraits, among which the 'Portrait of Emilie Floge' . The Albertina adds more drawings, and the Austrian Theater Museum, which dusts off the work "Nuda Veritas" very little given to being shown in public, so it is quite an event.
If you visit the Austrian capital in September , you will have the opportunity to enjoy 'Gustav Klimt, the musical' with the painter's life sung. You can choose to experience it in German or English, depending on what you want to put in flour.
One thing is clear, something has Klimt , a 'noséqué' that has made his fabrics break records in international auctions, the ' Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer' was sold in 2006 in New York for $135 million , and may her name be world famous. Surely he conceived an art for his time, and gave art its freedom. Happy birthday, Gustav Klimt.
'Schönbrunner Landscape', 1916. Gustav Klimt. At the Leopold Museum.
'Egelsee in Oberösterreich', 1899. Gustav Klimt. At the Leopold Museum.