Gustav Klimt
Portrait of a Lady in Black/Portrait of Marie Breunig, About 1894
Oil on canvas
155 x 75 cm
Privately owned, Austria
Marie Breunig was born in humble circumstances in one of the crownlands of the monarchy and married a successful Viennese businessman. She was also a client of the Flöge sisters’ fashion salon and was already befriended with them at the time this painting was created. More on Marie Breunig
Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d’art. Klimt’s primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. In addition to his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods.
Early in his artistic career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he developed a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his “golden phase,” many of which include gold leaf. More Gustav Klimt
After the death of Klimt, the writer and art critic Berta Tsukerkandl wrote in the Vienna newspaper Wiener Zeitung: “One of the greatest died. A simple hero. Quiet , tenacious fighter. Invincible. Winner. […] The death of Klimt permeates our souls as something incomprehensible , as the desecration of wonderful gift , prepodnesonnogo humanity. ” The Leopold Museum
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