Gustav Klimt

While Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) started out in the tradition of historicism and the “Ringstrasse era”, the Vienna-born artist became the pioneer of Austrian Modernism from the mid-1890s. He co-founded the Union of Austrian Artists – Secession in 1897 and became its first president. The ground-breaking and trend-setting association led Viennese Jugendstil towards a new pinnacle. Along with paintings and drawings from all the periods of the artist’s work, the Leopold Museum also houses the anteroom of Klimt’s studio on Josefstädter Strasse. Further in possession of the world’s most comprehensive collection of Klimt’s photographs, correspondence and archival material, the Leopold Museum is able to afford intimate insights into the life of this eminent artist personality. The outstanding works from the collection, including the painting On Lake Attersee (1900), in which Klimt sounded out painterly limits all the way to abstraction, are supplemented with around two dozen paintings from the museum’s own holdings and private collections. The Leopold Museum is also home to one of Klimt’s three large-scale allegories, the painting Death and Life, whose bold composition depicts the cycle of human existence – a topic which Klimt explored until shortly before his death.