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- Oeuvre Coming from modest circumstances, Klimt studied at the National School of Applied Arts where his talent for drawing soon marked him out. In the 1880s and 1890s the state awarded him, together with his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch, a series of public commissions. Their designs included the spandrels and intercolumniation paintings in the Museum of Art History and the paintings in the side exits of the Burgtheater. These works strongly reflected the taste of Viennese historicism. However, in the 1890s, Klimt discovered new ways of expressing himself. He produced his faculty paintings for the ceiling of the ballroom at Vienna University which were an idiosyncratic development of the art nouveau style. They were rejected by his professors because of „obscene“ elements and pessimistic messages. After a long lasting public controversy, the painter, accustomed to success, rejected the commission and sold the works privately. Along with the faculty paintings, the Beethoven frieze, created in 1902 at the Secession Building, can be seen as a turning point in his work. Here, for the first time, Klimt used purity of line as a means of expression. The succeeding generation of artists, namely Kokoschka and Schiele, were to become associated with this particular form of composition. In the summer, Klimt turned his attention to painting landscapes at Attersee. In private commissions, he painted beautiful society women and here his ornamental patterns reached new peaks. The LEOPOLD MUSEUM displays some of his most important work, such as the large-size „Tod und Leben“ (Life and Death) in its permanent exhibition. |
 Gustav Klimt, Death and Life, 1910/15 |
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