“Viewfinder” from the Estate of Gustav Klimt, undated

This undated Viewfinder was discovered in the estate of the painter and graphic artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). It is a rectangular piece of cardboard into which Klimt had cut a square hole. The artist used this utensil, along with a telescope, to find motifs for his landscape paintings. The square hole in the Viewfinder reflects Klimt’s preference of square picture formats for his landscapes from 1899. The use of viewfinders also betrays the influence that photography had on painting. In a letter to his lover Mizzi Zimmermann (1879–1975), written in August 1903, Klimt describes his search of ideal landscape motifs: “used my viewfinder, a hole cut in a piece of cardboard, to search for motifs for the landscapes I intend to paint and found much – or nothing, if you will.”

MR, 2022