Gustav Klimt

Sketch of a Woman Standing

1903

The Kiss, no. 1 from the fifth installment of Das Werk Gustav Klimts Undoubtedly Klimt’s best known and most reproduced images, this printed version of The Kiss is the only one with which Klimt was directly involved. Unveiled at Vienna’s Kunstschau 1908, and saved for the fifth and final delivery of Das Werk, The Kiss marks a triumph in Klimt’s career and represents a culmination of many themes in his oeuvre up to that point. After all of the controversy surrounding the State’s prior rejection of the University murals commissioned from Klimt, the Ministry of Education reversed their policy toward the artist with a show of wholehearted support by purchasing for the Osterreichische Galerie BelvedereThe Kiss while it still hung in the Kunstschau exhibit. Considered in relation to the eight multicolored collotypes which preceded its print debut in the Das Werk portfolio, The Kiss literally embraces all which came before it. The golden seaweed dangling in tresses from the lovers’ feet harkens back to Water Snakes I and II. The bed of flowers evokes the settings Klimt created in both The Golden Knight and The Sunflower. In fact, this image sprung out of a particularly happy summer spent in the company of Klimt’s lover, Emilie Floge...

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

after Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918), AUSTRIA “ART CANNOT BE MODERN, ART IS PRIMORDIALLY ETERNAL.” -SCHIELE Defiantly iconoclastic in life and art, Egon Schiele is esteemed for his mas...

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...

Koloman Moser (1868 –1918), AUSTRIAN Instead of applying his flair and art education solely to painting, Koloman Moser embodied the idea of Gesamt Kunstwerk (all-embracing art w...

Koloman Moser (1868 –1918), AUSTRIAN Instead of applying his flair and art education solely to painting, Koloman Moser embodied the idea of Gesamt Kunstwerk (all-embracing art work) by designing architecture, furniture, jewelry, graphics, and tapestries meant to coordinate every detail of an environment. His work transcended the imitative decorative arts of earlier eras and helped to define Modernism for generations to come. Moser achieved a remarkable balance between intellectual structure (often geometric) and hedonistic luxury. Collaborating with Gustav Klimt and Josef Hoffmann, the artist was an editor and active contributor to Ver Sacrum, (Sacred Spring), the journal of the Viennese Secession that was so prized for its aesthetics and high quality production that it was considered a work of art. The magazine featured drawings and designs in the Jugendstil style (Youth) along with literary contributions from distinguished writers from across Europe. It quickly disseminated both the spirit and the style of the Secession. In 1903 Moser and Hoffmann founded and led the Wiener Werkstatte (Viennese Workshop) a collective of artisans that produced elegant decorative arts items, not as industrial prototypes but for the purpose of sale to the public. The plan, as idealistic then as now, was to elevate the lives of consumers by means of beautiful and useful interior surroundings. Moser’s influence has endured throughout the century. His design sensibility is evident from the mid-century modern furniture of the 1950s and ‘60s to the psychedelic rock posters...