There is nothing special about me - Gustav Klimt

Painter Gustav Klimt had many quirks. Once his client came to his studio to have her portrait painted wearing a flashy jacket. Klimt painted her portrait with the jacket turned inside out exposing the red silk lining within!

Klimt does not seem to have written much about his artistic vision or painting methods. He did not like to talk about himself. “I am convinced that I am not particularly interesting as a person.” In a rare writing he states "I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women... There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night ... Who ever wants to know something about me, ought to look carefully at my pictures.” Klimt was a passionate artist who worked hard and rebelled against the establishment. He adored his pet cat, and women.

Gustav Klimt 1862 – 1918 was an Austrian symbolist painter famous for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. His primary subject was the female body. He also painted landscapes. He was influenced by Japanese art and its methods.

His father was a gold and silver engraver. At 14, he enrolled in Vienna’s School of Applied Arts where he studied many subjects, including fresco painting and mosaic. He was a diligent student and spent many hours in museums studying antique vases and making copies of paintings.

He sold portraits painted from photographs and made technical drawings for an ear specialist. These projects contributed to Klimt’s early mastery of painting.

Klimt began to take on decorative commissions, such as elaborate murals and ceiling paintings for public buildings. In the late 1880s, his beautiful murals with classical themes and mythological figures impressed the Emperor, who awarded Klimt the Golden Order of Merit for his frescoes.

What inspired Klimt? During his early days, Klimt was fascinated with history paintings. He realised that he could develop his interest in the human figure through themes showing Greek gods and mythological figures.

Klimt began to reject traditional approaches to painting involving rationality and naturalism. He was commissioned to paint a grand mural depicting the history of art for a Museum. He chose to represent each stage, from Egypt to the Renaissance, through female figures. But unlike his predecessors, he showed his subjects with human characteristics and not Godly ones.

In the 1900s he started to focus on human emotions. His portraits of high society women were done with expressive features and elaborate gowns. An art historian once said of Klimt’s work: “the anatomy of the models becomes ornamentation, and the ornamentation becomes anatomy,”

Klimt travelled to Italy, where he saw Byzantine art with all its shimmering gilded details. It had a deep impact on him, and his famous Gold Period followed. For portrait commissions, the clothing of his subjects became tapestries of abstract shapes rendered in rich golds, reds, blues, and greens. During this time, even paintings without human figures, like landscapes, were filled with spirals, whirlpools, plenty of flowers.

He almost never socialised with other artists. Klimt's fame usually brought clients to his studio. His painting method was very deliberate and painstaking at times and he required lengthy sittings by his subjects. He brought in a new period of figurative paintings that moved away from conventional rules.

Though a fine art painter, Klimt was an outstanding contributor to the idea of equality between the fine and decorative arts. Having achieved some of his early success by painting within an architectural framework, he accepted many of his best-known commissions that combined elements of art and craft with architecture, thereby creating a "total work of art". Later in his career, he worked together with artists of an Austrian design organisation that aimed to improve the quality and visual appeal of everyday objects.

Gold leaf covered Klimt paintings or our very own Indian Tanjore paintings which depict mythological characters decorated with gold leaf work, just go to show that ‘painting’ and ‘craft’ need not be mutually exclusive. In fact together they make for some of the best art we see today!

Klimt is still remembered as one of the greatest decorative painters of the 20th century. Today, his work still captivates us. Museums sell more colour reproductions of Klimt’s paintings than those of any other artist.

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Published in Colour Canvas in January 2019