Gustav Klimt. Artist of the Century - Leopold Museum

Comprehensive exhibition divided into eight thematic emphases highlights periods in the artist’s oeuvre

Marking the transition from historicism to Jugendstil, Gustav Klimt’s oeuvre shaped the beginning of modern art in Vienna. 100 years after his death, the Leopold Museum pays tribute to the leading figure in Vienna around 1900 with a comprehensive exhibition divided into eight thematic emphases and illustrating all the periods of the artist’s oeuvre by means of some 35 paintings, 90 drawings, 30 photographs and approx. 150 archival documents.

Along with exhibits from the Leopold Museum and the Leopold Private Collection, the exhibition also features numerous works given to the museum by a Klimt descendant as a new permanent loan, as well as four paintings and six drawings from a private collection, which were also entrusted to the museum as permanent loans. The presentation further includes select loans from Austrian and international collections, and for the first time provides comprehensive insights into the collection of the Klimt Foundation, which acts as scientific research and cooperation partner to this exhibition.

The presentation Gustav Klimt. Artist of the Century traces an arc from Klimt’s beginnings at the height of the Gründerzeit era dominated by historicism, via his artistic paradigm shift and the evolution of his own, individual style from the mid-1890s, when he created his first drafts for the Faculty Paintings for the ceremonial hall of Vienna University, which would cause a scandal. The overview continues with Gustav Klimt as a leading figure of the Vienna Secession, whose members broke with esthetical conventions and paved the way for Jugendstil, and goes on to shine the spotlight on his activities as a sought-after portraitist of the wealthy Viennese bourgeoisie as well as on his highly erotic, symbolistically charged female depictions.

Sommer sojourns in the Salzkammergut region – Klimt’s landscapes

Gustav Klimt’s regular summer sojourns on the Attersee with Emilie Flöge and her family set in around the turn of the century. Klimt’s need for privacy and distance was especially great after the controversy caused by his Faculty Paintings. Far from the city and surrounded by intimate friends, Klimt found both relaxation and inspiration. A selection of his works created during these stays in the Salzkammergut region can be seen in the exhibition.

“Along with exceptional works from international collections and from the museum’s own holdings, a new permanent loan is now on display at the Leopold Museum – Klimt’s only Viennese landscape, the work Schönbrunn Landscape (1916). Klimt’s landscapes make up around one quarter of his painterly oeuvre. They were predominantly created in nature, or at times from photographs and picture postcards in his Vienna studio. The artist wanted to depict a natural environment independent of man that reflects a tranquil atmosphere – his interest in a symbolic expression and in aspects of timelessness and transience were central to these works,” explains Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the curator of the exhibition.

Death and Life and The Bride enter into a dialogue for the first time

The exhibition sees two monumental allegorical works by Klimt enter into a dialogue for the first time: Death and Life (1910/11, reworked in 1915/16) has been part of the Leopold Museum’s collection compiled by Rudolf Leopold for 40 years, while The Bride(1917/18) was brought into the collection of the Klimt Foundation in 2013. Since the Faculty Paintings, Gustav Klimt had addressed the cycle of life and its individual phases.

During the last years of his oeuvre, and shaped by personal experiences, Klimt started to rework the first version of Death and Life in 1915 and transferred depictions of individual stages of life as solitary figures to his work The Bride. The paintings, which are both shown in the exhibition, were prepared by Klimt with numerous drawings. The sketchbook for his last allegory has survived, and affords valuable insights into the process of the work’s composition and creation.

“The first presentation of drawings along with the extant sketchbook and the painting The Bride from the collection of the Klimt Foundation allows visitors to delve directly into the fantasies and visions of this exceptional artist. The painting further affords scope for new interpretations and, through its Expressionist accents, links Gustav Klimt as a pioneer of modernism in Austria with his successors Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele,” according to the exhibition’s curator Sandra Tretter.

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

FRAUENBILDNIS, UM 1893

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN, C. 1893

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

155 × 75 cm

Belvedere, Wien, 2013, Dauerleihgabe aus Privatbesitz

Belvedere, Vienna, 2013, Permanent loan from private collection

Foto

| Photo:

Belvedere, Wien

| Vienna/

Johannes Stoll

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

KLARA KLIMT, UM 1880

KLARA KLIMT, C. 1880

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

30,3 × 21,3 cm

ARGE Sammlung Gustav Klimt/Dauerleihgabe im Leopold Museum, Wien

ARGE Collection Gustav Klimt/Permanent loan, Leopold Museum, Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

SITZENDES JUNGES MÄDCHEN, UM 1894

SEATED YOUNG GIRL, C. 1894

Öl auf Holz

| Oil on wood

14,1 × 9,6 cm

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

SCHUBERT AM KLAVIER (ENTWURF), 1896

SCHUBERT AT THE PIANO (STUDY)

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

30 × 39 cm

Privatsammlung/Dauerleihgabe im Leopold Museum, Wien

Private collection/Permanent loan, Leopold Museum, Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

MÄDCHEN IM GRÜNEN, 1896–1899

GIRL IN THE FOLIAGE

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

32,4 × 24 cm

Klimt-Foundation, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Klimt-Foundation, Wien

| Vienna

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

AM ATTERSEE, 1900

ON LAKE ATTERSEE

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

80,2 × 80,2 cm

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

DIE GROSSE PAPPEL II (AUFSTEIGENDES GEWITTER), 1902/03

THE LARGE POPLAR II (GATHERING STORM)

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

100,8 × 100,8 cm

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

OBSTGARTEN AM ABEND, 1898

ORCHARD IN THE EVENING

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

69 × 55,6 cm

Privatsammlung/Dauerleihgabe im Leopold Museum, Wien

Private collection/Permanent loan, Leopold Museum, Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

TANNENWALD I, 1901

PINE FOREST I

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

90,5 × 90 cm

Kunsthaus Zug, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm

Foto

| Photo:

Kunsthaus Zug, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm/Alfred Frommenwiler

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

FREUNDINNEN I (DIE SCHWESTERN), 1907

FRIENDS I (SISTERS)

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

125 × 42 cm

Klimt-Foundation, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Klimt-Foundation, Wien

| Vienna

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

SCHÖNBRUNNER LANDSCHAFT, 1916

SCHÖNBRUNN LANDSCAPE

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

110 × 110 cm

Privatbesitz

| Private collection

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

TOD UND LEBEN, 1910/11, UMGEARBEITET 1915/16

DEATH AND LIFE, REWORKED IN 1915/16

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

180,8 × 200,6 cm

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

DIE BRAUT, 1917/18 (UNVOLLENDET)

THE BRIDE, 1917/18 (UNFINISHED)

Öl, schwarze Kreide auf Leinwand

| Oil, black chalk on canvas

165 × 191 cm

Klimt-Foundation, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Klimt-Foundation, Wien

| Vienna

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

LITZLBERGKELLER, 1915/16

Öl auf Leinwand

| Oil on canvas

110 × 110 cm

Privatsammlung

| Private collection

Foto

| Photo:

Bildarchiv

| picture archives

Manfred Thumberger

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

BRUSTBILD EINER JUNGEN DAME MIT HUT UND CAPE IM PROFIL NACH LINKS, 1897/98

BUST PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY WITH HAT AND CAPE IN PROFILE FROM THE LEFT

Kohle, schwarze Kreide auf Packpapier

| Charcoal, black chalk on brown paper

42,3 × 22,6 cm

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

 

GUSTAV KLIMT

1862–1918

TÄNZERIN IM FLAMENCO-KOSTÜM,

STUDIE ZU „JUDITH II (SALOME)“, UM 1908

DANCER IN A FLAMENCO COSTUME,

STUDY FOR

“

JUDITH II (SALOME), C. 1908

Bleistift, roter Farbstift, schwarze Kreide, Gouache, Deckweiß auf Japanpapier

Pencil, red crayon, black chalk, gouache, opaque white on Japanese paper

55 × 34,9 cm

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna

Foto

| Photo:

Leopold Museum, Wien

| Vienna/

Manfred Thumberger

 

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One

Tate Britain, Linbury Galleries

 5 June – 23 September 2018

George Grosz Grey Day 1921. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Acquired by the Federal State of Berlin © Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018.

Marking 100 years since the end of the First World War, this exhibition explores the immediate impact of the conflict on British, German and French art. As the first exhibition to examine the culture of memorials alongside new developments in post-war art it will consider how artists responded to the physical and psychological scars left on Europe. Aftermath brings together over 150 works from 1916 to 1932 by artists including George Grosz, Fernand Léger and C.R.W. Nevinson. During this tumultuous period, artists began to explore new imagery and new ways of making art in their responses to the experience of war, the culture of remembrance, and the rebuilding of cities and societies.

The First World War began to be constructed as memory almost as soon as it had begun. During the war artists created works which reflected on its long-term impact. Battlefield landscapes and images of soldiers’s graves such as

 

William Orpen’s A Grave in a Trench 1917

 

and Paul Jouve’s Tombe d’un soldat serbe a Kenali 1917 evoked silence and absence in the aftermath of battle.

After the armistice official public memorials provided a focus for mourning and remembrance. Artists including Käthe Kollwitz, André Mare and Charles Sargeant Jagger produced sculptural memorials to commemorate those who lost their lives in the conflict. The exhibition explores the different forms that memorials took, and their importance for social and political cohesion. It also shows the more personal memorials created using relics of the battlefield such as shrapnel and mortar shells.

Soldiers’ wounds were an alternative memorial, visible in flesh rather than stone, and disabled veterans were a constant reminder of the terrible cost of war.

Works such as

George Grosz (1893-1959)

Grey Day

1921

Oil paint on canvas

1150 x 800 mm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie. Acquired by the Federal State of Berlin.

© Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018. 

George Grosz’s Grey Day 1921

Otto Dix (1891-1969)

Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran. Two Victims of Capitalism

1923

Pen and ink on yellow card-board

469 x 373 mm

LWL- Museum für Kunst and Kultur (Westfälisches Landesmuseum) / Sabine Ahlbrand-Dornseif. © Estate of Otto Dix 2018.

and Otto Dix’s Prostitute and Disabled War Veteran 1923 used imagery of disabled veterans to demonstrate the inequalities in German society. In France, veterans were an important part of the visual culture of memorial ceremonies. In Britain, images of wounded soldiers such as Henry Tonks’s medical pastel portraits were usually seen in the context of therapy and healing.

This turbulent period also saw the birth of dada and surrealism in the work of Hannah Höch, Max Ernst, André Masson and Edward Burra among others. Artists used new visual forms to process experiences and memories of conflict. Dada photomontages by Hannah Höch reused war imagery while fragmented bodies and prosthetic limbs featured in works like Grosz and Heartfield’s The Petit-Bourgeois Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild. Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture 1920.

As well as the physical and psychological scars left on Europe, the exhibition also shows how post-war society began to rebuild itself, inspiring artists such as Georges Braque, Christian Schad and Winifred Knights to return to classicism and tradition while others such as Fernand Léger, Paul Citroen and C.R.W. Nevinson turned their minds to visions of a technological future in the modern city.

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One is curated by Dr Emma Chambers, Curator, Modern British Art and Dr Rachel Rose Smith, Assistant Curator, Modern British Art.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue from Tate Publishing .

Aftermath: Art in the Wake of World War One

Tate Britain, 5 June – 20 September 2018

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 – 1946)

Paths of Glory

1917

Oil paint on canvas

457 x 609 mm

© IWM (Art.IWM ART 518)

Christian Schad 1894 – 1982

Self-Portrait

1927

Oil on wood

760 x 620 mm

Lent from a private collection 1994

© Christian Schad Stiftung Aschaffenburg/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and DACS, London 2017

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889 – 1946)

Ypres After the First Bombardment

1916

Oil paint on canvas

991 x 1248 x 73 mm

Museums Sheffield 

Curt Querner (1904 – 1976)

Demonstration

1930

Oil paint on canvas

870 x 660 mm

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie.

Photo credit: bpk/ Jörg P. Anders

© DACS, 2018

Edward Burra 1905-1976

The Snack Bar

1930

Oil paint on canvas

762 x 559 mm

Tate

© The estate of Edward Burra, courtesy Lefevre Fine Art, London

George Grosz (1893-1959)

“Daum” Marries her Pedantic Automaton “George” in May 1920, John Heartfield is Very Glad of It (Meta-Mech. Constr. After Prof. R. Huasmann)

1920

Watercolour, pencil, pen, ink and collage on card

425 x 319 mm

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin

© Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018. 

George Grosz (1893-1959)

The Petit-Bourgeois Philistine Heartfield Gone Wild. Electro-Mechanical Tatlin Sculpture

1920

900 x 450 x 450 mm

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin

© Estate of George Grosz, Princeton, N.J. 2018. 

Georges Rouault (1871-1958)

"Arise, you dead!" (War, plate 54)

1922-27

Photo-etching, aquatint and drypoint on paper

800 x 630 x 30 mm

Fondation Georges Rouault

© ADAGCP, Paris and DACS, London 2018

Hannah Hoch (1889 – 1978)

Dada Rundschau

1919

437 x 345 mm

Berlinische Galerie, Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin

© DACS, 2018

Jacob Epstein (1880-1959)

Torso in Metal from “The Rock Drill”

1913-14

Bronze

705 x 584 x 445 mm

Tate

© The Estate of Jacob Epstein

Otto Dix (1891-1969)

War: Skull

1924

Etching on paper

257 x 195 mm

The George Economou Collection.

© Estate of Otto Dix 2018

Paul Nash (1889 – 1946)

Wire

1918-9

Watercolour, chalk and ink on paper

486 x 635 mm

© IWM (Art.IWM ART 2705)

William Orpen (1878 – 1931)

To the Unknown British Soldier in France

1921-8

Oil paint on canvas

1542 x 1289 mm

© IWM (Art.IWM ART 4438)

William Roberts (1895 – 1980)

The Dance Club (The Jazz Party)

1923

Oil paint on canvas

762 x 1066 mm

Leeds Museums and Galleries

© Estate of John David Roberts. By permission of the Treasury Solicitor

Matisse et Picasso, la comédie du modèle

Musée Matisse

Du 23 juin 2018 au 29 sept. 2018



Henri Matisse, Marguerite, 1907. Huile sur toile Musée national Picasso-­‐Paris. Donation en 1973 © Succession H. Matisse. Photo: © RMN-­‐Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-­‐Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau.



Henri Matisse
Jeune fille en blanc, fond rouge, hiver 1946
Huile sur toile
Dation Pierre Matisse en 1991
Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle, Centre Pompidou, Paris
Dépôt au musée des Beaux-arts de Lyon, 1993
© Succession H. Matisse
Photo : © RMN-Grand Palais / René-Gabriel Ojéda / Thierry Le Mage  




Pablo Picasso
Peintre à la palette et au chevalet, 1928
Huile sur toile
Musée national Picasso-Paris
Dation en 1979
© Succession Picasso, 2018
Photo : © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Adrien Didierjean

 

La Flûte de Pan, Pablo Picasso, 1923, Antibes, huile sur toile, 205 x 174 cm, , Dation Pablo Picasso, 1979, MP79, Musée national Picasso, -, Paris © RMN, -, Grand Palais (Musée national P, icasso, -, Paris) / Jean, -, Gilles Berizzi © , Succession Picasso 2017,

Classic Beauties. Artists, Italy and the Esthetic Ideals of the 18th Century

 
Hermitage Amsterdam’s new exhibition (through Jan. 18), Classic Beauties. Artists, Italy and the Esthetic Ideals of the 18th Century, is a summer art highlight on the Continent.

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The show tells how artists and tourists flocked to Italy, and more especially Rome, in the second half of the eighteenth century. From all over Europe they travelled to the Eternal City in search of inspiration and to see for themselves the newly excavated classical Greco-Roman sculptures and buildings. Their experiences prompted a new and austere kind of fashionable architecture and, in the visual arts, an unprecedentedly sensual style that sent shock waves through society: a naked, superhuman beauty more daring than anything attempted by the Greeks and Romans. Neoclassicism was born.


 

The archaeological finds sparked a craze for travel among young aristocrats across the continent. Many spent months travelling to and sightseeing in Italy. Among them were Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the ‘Count and Countess of the North’ (the later Russian Tsar Paul I and his wife Maria Fyodorovna). In the course of their ‘Grand Tour’ they encountered the greatest artists of the day.
With over sixty sculptures, paintings and drawings by 25 top names, the exhibition offers visitors their own Grand Tour of Italy. On the way, it introduces them to the artists of the period, including Pompeo Batoni, Anton Raphael Mengs, Angelica Kauffmann and – most celebrated of all – Antonio Canova. The show features no fewer than eight sculptures by the latter, including his iconic

• 

Three Graces, Cupid and Psyche and Hebe.

photo: Aurelio Amendola, State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

To create Classic Beauties, the Hermitage Amsterdam has had exclusive access to the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The displays are further enriched with loans from other private and public collections, including Paul and Maria’s Pavlovsk Palace in Russia and the Teylers Museum in Haarlem (The Netherlands).

Lots of images