Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt was born in a tiny town near Vienna in 1862 and educated at the Kunstgewerbe Art Faculty. Klimt was part of a 19th century movement that infused art with mysticism by employing mythology and dream imagery to paint the language of the soul.
Klimt’s use of symbolism in his work was considered too deviant and his art was consistently being criticized for being both too sensuous and erotic. Klimt paintings that were so heavily scorned during his time but today are said to be some of the most significant paintings ever to come out of Vienna. Gustav Klimt started his career as an artist in 1883 when he formed Kanstlercompanie ( an organization composed of artists ) with his brother Ernest and a buddy named Franz Matsch. They were commissioned by theatres, museums and churches to embellish the walls with murals and paintings.
One of Klimt’s most famed paintings Crisis was commissioned by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
In 1893, Klimt and Matsch had a falling out over a commission from the new varsity of Vienna to embellish the ceiling of the Great Hall. Nearly right away following this break with Matsch, Klimt’s painting Philosophy was exhibited at the Paris World Fair and won the Grand Prix.
Gustav Klimt paintings are distinguished visually by their stylish gold backgrounds and mosaic patterns. Thematically, Klimt celebrates life, as demonstrated in The Kiss, a popular painting of a pair welcoming enthusiastically. on occasion, his paintings also juxtapose the thrill of life with the certainty of death. Gustav Klimt stiffed it from pneumonia in Vienna in 1918.
Fortunately for the world, his work lives on.