Gustav Klimt, book ornamentation by Bertold Löffler, Vienna/Leipzig 1903, 45 pages, 1903

The genre of advertising art was one of the core domains of the painter, graphic artist and designer Bertold Löffler (1874–1960). In 1903, he created the book ornamentation for this publication by the author Felix Salten (1869–1945) on the central figure of Viennese Jugendstil, Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). In keeping with the esthetic criteria of Viennese Jugendstil, the cover features exclusively geometrical decor. While the book’s format is a near square, Löffler drew the inner cartouche as a perfect square, accurate to the millimeter, in an allusion to the format of Klimt’s paintings. The framing of this cartouche corresponds to a picture frame, albeit an abstracted one. In the area of the cartouche, underneath a star and against a black background, Löffler placed the names of Salten and Klimt, the latter in a deliberate imitation of the way Klimt typically signed his paintings. Outside of this inner square, Löffler placed a square grid and positioned moss-green squares at the crossover points.

MR, 2021