A few details about the artist’s life and work

Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918) was one of the most influential painters of the Vienna Secession.

His works mark the definitive transition between traditional academic art and the avant-garde art of the 1900s.
In particular, the Austrian Secession, which developed at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, promoted the idea of the total work of art: works that could embrace all the arts, not only painting and sculpture but also the so-called “minor” arts, the applied and decorative arts, for centuries belittled and considered craft rather than true art.

Klimt championed an art that includes figuration and decoration, drawing inspiration from the ancient arts, from mosaic, from wood, glass and stone working: his works are made of a more “felt” and “sentimental” figuration, breaking away from the rigidity of academic art to flow into vibrant and absolutely inimitable works.