1862 – 1918 · painting, gold-ground decoration, mural frieze design
Gustav Klimt
Flattened fields of gold leaf where mosaic-like rectangles and eyes dissolve two figures into a single ornament.
The record
Gustav Klimt, born near Vienna on 14 July 1862, trained as an architectural decorator before leading the break with the establishment as founding president of the Vienna Secession in 1897.
His university ceiling paintings provoked a public scandal, after which he turned to private patronage and his gold-ground 'Golden Period', producing The Kiss and the designs for the Stoclet Frieze.
He died in Vienna on 6 February 1918 after a stroke, leaving unfinished canvases that define Austrian modernism.
Flattened fields of gold leaf where mosaic-like rectangles and eyes dissolve two figures into a single ornament.