H.O. Miethke Das Werk folio "Sunflower" collotype print
Sunflower, no. 10 from the third installment of Das Werk Gustav Klimts
Created during his residency in Litzlberg on Attersee, where Klimt and the Floge family summered from 1900-1907, Klimt explores nature’s transcendental qualities. His single sunflower is human-like, it’s golden halo is like a ring of sun-kissed hair surrounding a bald pate. It’s known that at the same time Klimt was creating this image, he was also at work on a photo essay about the Floge sisters’ clothing from their fashion salon. Their fashion house was best known for its “reform dresses” which featured loose-fitting long robes which billowed at the arms and torso. Viewed with this in mind, it is not a hard leap to imagine the lone sunflower as a self-portrait from reverse. Klimt’s balding head crowned in a golden corona forms the apex of a pyramidal flowing gown of foliage and flowers. By orienting the anthropomorphic flower at the garden’s central foreground and adorning it with repetitive motifs of round flowers of varying sizes, Klimt’s sunflower...
Category
Early 1900s Vienna Secession Landscape Prints
