Klimt's Women

Classic large female portraits

Viennese artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) expressed a dedication to the theme of woman throughout his life-in his early historical paintings, in allegorical depictions and erotic drawings, and in classic large female portraits.

Klimt's approach to women

At the turn of the century, Klimt created a completely new type of picture with his sumptuously ornamented female portraits.This gorgeously illustrated book offers for the first time a survey of Klimt's approach to the female form. The volume includes a great number of his works depicting women, and it examines how fundamental changes in the social structure at the turn of the century led to new positions for women on both ideological and cultural levels.
The contributors to the book discuss such topics as Vienna's cultural role in 1900, the importance of the affluent bourgeoisie, patronage, and the myth of "Whole Art" (Gesamtkunstwerk).

Idiosyncratic treatment of the female

The book also illuminates Klimt's idiosyncratic treatment of the female in relation to her European background and sets his work against various interpretations of this theme in key works by contemporary artists including Ferdinand Hodler, Fernand Khnopff, Oskar Kokoschka, Hans Makart, Edouard Manet, Edvard Munch, and Egon Schiele.
This book is the catalogue for an exhibition at Österreichische Galerie in Belvedere from 20 September 2000 to 7 January 2001.

Tobias G. Natter and Gerbert Frodl

Gerbert Frodl is director of the Österreichische Galerie, Vienna. Tobias G. Natter is curator of twentieth-century art at the Österreichische Galerie, Vienna and guest curator at the Jewish Museum, Vienna.