Gustav Klimt, Pallas Athena, from The Work of Gustav Klimt, 1918 (after)

1918

This exquisite heliogravure and collotype with metallic inks after Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), titled Medizin (Medicine), from the folio Gustav Klimt, Eine Nachlese (Gustav Klimt, A Po...

This exquisite heliogravure and collotype after Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), titled Salome (Salome), from the folio Das Werk von Gustav Klimt (The Work of Gustav Klimt), originates from...

This exquisite heliogravure and collotype after Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), titled Die Jurisprudenz (Jurisprudence), from the folio Das Werk von Gustav Klimt (The Work of Gustav Klimt)...

This exquisite heliogravure and collotype after Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), titled Medizin (Medicine), from the folio Das Werk von Gustav Klimt (The Work of Gustav Klimt), originates f...

Judith I, no. 9 from the second installment of Das Werk Gustav Klimts Much like his treatment of the Classical personage, Danae, from Greek mythology, Klimt’s depiction of Judith takes an Old Testament character, a heroine who avenges the death of her husband by killing an Assyrian king, and firmly positions her in his present-day Vienna. His multicolored collotype rips the canvas from its gilded frame which directly references the subject with its title: “Judith und Holofernes”. Now in print form, Judith, holding the severed head of a male in murky shadow, is the ultimate Viennese femme fatale. Her likeness is unmistakably similar to a former lover of Klimt’s and famous Viennese soprano, Anna von Mildenburg. Though his allusion to ancient Assyria is apt, Klimt literally lifted the gold patterned background’s design motif from a relief detail from Sennacherib’s Palace displayed in a London museum. His context then is contemporary. In a sensual and sexually powerful tour de force, Klimt’s Judith...

As an artist trained in the applied arts, Gustav Klimt valued all forms of art, including the graphic arts. This final design from 1896 for inclusion in Allegorien published by Gerlach & Schenk demonstrates respect for artistic precedent and for a wide range of media and technique. The publication was printed in an unknown number of copies. Klimt’s rendering in latin of the title, “SCVLPTVR.,” with three-dimensional effect on the wall, is a figurative allusion to this medium as well as a literal reference to Ancient Rome. By doing the same with his signature and date in roman numerals on the right hand side of the image, Klimt places himself, The Artist, firmly in this linear and legitimizing context of art history and as its modern standard-bearer. Playing on Classical mythology and the story of Pygmalion, in which a statue comes to life, Klimt presents his modern Venus holding an apple. Klimt’s Venus exhibits a curvilinear softness; there are no angles. Klimt deftly shows the possibilities in a graphic image to give life to dark, wavy hair and tenderness to swelling breasts and belly. To further emphasize the allegory of thriving modern art, he contrasts his Venus with the cold, hard ancient classical head whose eyes are vacuous and whose hair is but a stylized mass of curls. Klimt’s living Venus stands in front of the large bust and large classical pillar upon which is a sculpture of a Sphinx and a Greek Attic bust. As if a gallery to represent sculpture’s “best of” through the ages, the upper horizontal panel includes bust depictions in marble, cast metal and wood...

Contributors to Gerlach & Schenk’s publications valued design and innovation in the graphic arts just as much as they examined allegories as subject matter for exploration. Here, Gus...

After Gustav Klimt, Max Eisler #10, Ausschnitt aus dem Bilde “Medizin”; multi-color collotype detail from Medicine, one of the faculty paintings for the Uni...