Gustav Klimt was a painter from Austria who was born in 1862 and lived until the age of 56. He grew up in poverty but still managed to attend the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts due to a scholarship he received. It is said that he spent hours and hours copying old paintings from museums in Vienna. From there he did many commissions and launched his own studio with his friend Franz Masch. He and his friends founded the Vienna Secession in 1897 as a way for artists to gather and break against conservative traditions. He started painting murals, portraits and other ‘decorative’ projects which provided him with a good flow of income and the confidence to do what he was about to do. It was now that he really rebelled against the norm and painted women with erotic symbolism. He was keen on going against ‘academic art’ and depicting whatever he felt like, which included bodies of women and a lot of shapes with hidden (usually sexual) meanings. This obviously made him very controversial and the sexual connotations in his work shocked the public. In fact, due to this his painting was not featured in the Great Hall and even the German army purposely ruined his paintings. Although I understand how his use of bold figures, symbolism and shapes made him very popular, I am not a big fan of his work personally. It seems rather simplistic and the lack of realism makes it look childish. I also feel that his shapes are very abstract and I find it hard to decipher the meaning behind it.

Research Sources:

https://www.wikiart.org/en/gustav-klimt

https://www.biography.com/artist/gustav-klimt

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-gustav-klimt#:~:text=Later%20in%20his%20career%2C%20Klimt,Art%20Nouveau%20and%20Cubism%2C%20respectively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Klimt#Vienna_Secession_years

Gustav Klimt