Max Kurzweil Art

Original AIR FRANCE EUROPE, Editions Perceval, artist: Jacques Nathan Garamond. Professional acid-free archival linen backed vintage travel post...

DAS WERK GUSTAV KLIMTS, a portfolio of 50 prints, ten of which are multicolor collotypes on chine colle paper laid down on hand-made heavy cream wove paper with deckled edges; under ...

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...

Danaë, no. 2 from the fourth installment of Das Werk Gustav Klimts Danae originates from Greek mythology. She is the daughter of the King of Argos. Because a...

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

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figur...

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figur...

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figur...

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figur...

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figur...

after Carl Otto Czeschka, (1878-1960), Austrian A leading member of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte (Viennese Workshop), Carl Otto Czeschka was a vital figur...

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...