Place of birth: Austria
Family: Mother: Anna Finster
Father: Ernst Klimt
Biography:
Gustav Klimt, a Symbolist painter, was born on July 14, 1862 in Baumgarten, near Vienna, Austria.
This man has been educated at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and has learned the techniques of the decorative arts there. After a few years he joined and became an honorary member of the Universities of Munich and Vienna.
By becoming an artist which has been due to his achievements, after having studied, his greatest works are known, which include paintings, murals, sketches and other art objects, many of which are on display in Vienna. He has become over time the founding leader of the Wiener Sezession and its newspaper “Ver Sacrum”.
Fundamentally, Klimt has become known for his style, which highlighted the use of gold in paintings. His style shows the taste and way of representing naked women in his paintings, following the criteria of art nouveau, where he illustrates them ethereal and confident, resembling mermaids surrounded by flowers and gold. To arrive at the creation of these works Gustav had models, generally women, belonging to the Viennese bourgeoisie, but he also had an entourage of prostitute women who became muses of the artist himself.
In the vast majority of his works, Klimt shows female sexuality and balance with masculinity as their main themes. As for example shown in the work entitled “The kiss”, created in 1907, which shows a female world, where Klimt goes through the cycle of life in all its stages: procreation, gestation, infants, youth and old age, health and beauty, sickness and death.
Finally, the Austrian artist died in Vienna due to a stroke and was buried in the Hietzing cemetery in Vienna. A large number of his works have been known to have been confiscated by the Nazi dictatorship.
In the current year, 2006, one of Klimt’s paintings, precisely the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, becomes the most expensive painting in history, selling for $ 135 million.