Gustav Klimt // The Complete Paintings

A century after his death, Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) still startles with his unabashed eroticism, dazzling surfaces, and artistic experimentation. During his lifetime, he was a controversial star whose works made passions run high. A symbol of Modernism, as well as an embodiment of tradition, his works polarized and divided the art-loving world, with the press and general public alike split over the question: For or against Klimt? 

Through luminous spreads and carefully curated details, this monograph traces the repertoire of Japanese, Byzantine, and allegorical stimuli that informed Klimt’s flattened perspectives, his symbolic vocabulary, and his mosaic-like textures. Complete with top quality illustration, including new photography of the celebrated Stoclet Frieze, the book also follows Klimt through his prominent role in the Secessionist movement of 1897, his candid rendering of the female body, and his lustrous “golden phase".

Drawing upon contemporary critics and voices, the book examines the art world’s polarized reception to Klimt’s pictures as much as his own stylistic trajectory. From his landscape painting, to erotic works, to the controversial ceiling for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna, you can see how Klimt’s admixture of tradition and daring divided the press and public—becried by some as a pornographer, hailed by others as a modern maestro.