Klimt - Couverture souple

Gold, flowers, and female beauty

The work of the decadent Austrian symbolist

The unfading popularity of Gustav Klimt (1862 1918) attests not only to the particular appeal of his luxuriant painting but also to the universal themes with which he worked: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death.

The son of a goldsmith, Klimt created surfaces of ornate and jewel-like luminosity which show influence of both Egyptian and Japanese art. Through paintings, murals, and friezes, his work is defined by radiant color, fluid lines, floral elements, and mosaic-like patterning.

With a number of subjects dealing with sensuality and desire as well as anxiety and despair, all this iridescence is also suffused with feeling. Klimt's numerous images of women, characterized by curvaceous forms, tender flesh, red lips and flushed cheeks, were particularly charged with passion, at a time when such frank eroticism was still taboo in Viennese upper middle class society.

This book presents a selection of Klimt's work, introducing his pictorial world of decoration and desire, as well as his influence on artists to come.

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN s Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
a concise biography
approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Après avoir étudié l'art et l'archéologie à Vienne et à Marbourg, et passé sa thèse de doctorat en 1977, Gottfried Fliedl a enseigné de 1977 à 1986 à l'Ecole Supérieure des arts appliqués de Vienne. Entre 1990 et 2003, il a travaillé à l'Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire et de formation continue (IFF) de l'université de Vienne, entre autres comme maître de conférences en muséologie. Depuis 2004, il est directeur de la Museumakademie Joanneum à Graz.