Standing and Kneeling Female Nudes Embracing, c. 1917

While the present drawing was not included in Alice Strobl’s catalogue raisonné, it can be considered without a doubt to be a work by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) owing to the estate stamp and the type of depiction. Additionally, the reverse side features detailed sketches of a shoe and an underskirt that can be unequivocally ascribed to Klimt’s work Portrait of Friederike Maria Beer, created between November 1915 and February 1916. The front side of the work shows a standing naked woman with a half-grown girl clinging to her waist. The girl has her arm wrapped around the woman’s waist, while the woman has placed her arm on the girl’s shoulder. The standing woman not only corresponds to the female type Klimt depicted in the studies for his 1917/18 unfinished painting Adam and Eve but also shows motivic similarities to these studies, including the softly contoured hip, the rendering of the pubic area and the hand touching the hair. This suggests that the work was created around 1917, despite the fact that the depiction on the reverse side dates back to 1915/16.

FS