artchannel
                                                     EXHIBITION
                                                                                                                   
                                                                           KLIMT
                                                                             (1862-1918)

Gustav Klimt was born July 14, 1862 in Baumgarten, a Viennese suburb.
His father, an immigrant from Bohemia, failed in his occupation as a gold engraver, and his children were raised in utter poverty.

When he was just 14, Gustav quit school, but managed to enroll at a local college of art and craft. He was so talented, he began earning a living off commissions while still at school. He formed a partnership with his brother Ernst and another student, Franz Matsch.
Klimt-Matsch & Co. were getting rich on commissions for the new buildings going up in the 1890's. But in 1897 Klimt took part in the Secession Movement-a rebellion against the established art world-a breakaway group of successful artists who wanted to create work in modern and adventurous styles. Klimt paints a devastating vision of the human condition at the turn of the last century, replete with pain, sex and death. His work drew a storm of criticism.
Fortunately, though he lost all of the official commissions for mural painting, he was in great demand as a portraitist, and always made a comfortable living. Klimt was hardly a rebel. He hated publicity, preferring a routine of hard work, and closely guarded privacy.

The story of Gustav Klimt is his development as an artist. His work was wholly, and oddly, uninfluenced by the bizzare conditions of World War One. In 1918, Gustav Klimt suffered a stroke that left his whole right side paralyzed. His hope for recovery faded as pneumonia took him. Gustav Klimt died on the 6th of February 1918, just a few months prior to the complete collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and the entire world he had known. Gustav Klimt is a precursor to Nouveau, and German Expressionism.

His work clearly influenced artists like Modigliani and Brancusi.
His style is eloquent, his color incredible. The emotion he evokes is often bitter, and slightly sinister.