Gustav Klimt & K.K. Hof-und Staatsdruckerei

H.O. Miethke Das Werk folio "The Kiss" collotype print

1908-1914

Title page numbered: 263/450

Title page numbered: 263/450

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...

Title page numbered: 263/450

MAXIMILLIAN KURZWEIL (Austrian 1867-1916) DER POLSTER / THE CUSHION, 1903. Color woodcut printed on laid japon paper, affixed as usual to a support sheet from its upper sheet edge...

Original Vintage Poster by the Austrian artist Ferdinand Ludwig Graf, a member of the Hagenbund. This Viennese artist association moved as soon a...

Mädchen am Fenster. 1906-08. Color lithograph printed on smooth card stock. Full margins. Tipped into a later presentaion folder, signed by the artist in pencil, on the recto. Published by the Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna, with the printed postcard text on verso. Among Kokoschka's earliest prints were a series of 14 postcards, the current work and the following lot that he produced for the Wiener Werkstätte. Wingler/Welz 4. Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits...

Kurzweil, Maximilian. Der Polster, 1903. Color woodcut on japon. Included as an insert in Pan. Unsigned. Framed.11 1/4 x 10 1/4. 1 Ref: Hofstatter, p. 241; Pabst, p. 154. Maximillian Kurzweil was the co-founder of the Vienna Secession in 1897 and editor and illustrator of the influential Secessionist magazine Ver Sacrum...