Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (born July 14, 1862, Vienna, Austria—died February 6, 1918, Vienna) was an Austrian painter, a leading figure of Art Nouveau and one of the foremost decorative artists of the 20th century. He was especially known for his flat, brilliantly colored paintings and for founding the Vienna Sezession.

Early work

After studying at the Vienna School of Decorative Arts, Klimt in 1883 opened an independent studio specializing in the execution of mural paintings. His early work had a classical style that was typical of late 19th-century academic painting, as can be seen in his murals for the Vienna Burgtheater (1888) and on the staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.

University of Vienna murals and other large-scale commissions

1 of 2

2 of 2

In 1897 Klimt’s mature style emerged, and he founded the Vienna Sezession, a group of painters who revolted against academic art in favor of a highly decorative style similar to Art Nouveau. Soon thereafter he painted three allegorical murals for the ceiling of the University of Vienna auditorium that were violently criticized; the erotic symbolism and pessimism of these works created such a scandal that the murals were removed. His later murals, the Beethoven Frieze (1902) and the murals (1909–11) in the dining room of the Stoclet House in Brussels, are characterized by precisely linear drawing and the bold use of flat, decorative patterns of arbitrary color and gold leaf.

Britannica Quiz

Who Painted the Most Expensive Paintings in the World?

The Kiss and portraits

Klimt’s most successful works include The Kiss (1908–09) and a series of portraits of fashionable Viennese patrons, such as Fritza Riedler (1906) and Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907). In these works he treats the human figure without shadow and heightens the lush sensuality of skin by surrounding it with areas of flat, highly ornamental, brilliantly composed areas of decoration.

The Lady in Gold

During World War II Adele Bloch-Bauer I and several other Klimt paintings belonging to the Bloch-Bauer family were confiscated by the Nazis, and after the war they were added to the collection of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna. These works later became the focus of a lengthy legal battle by the heirs of the Bloch-Bauers, and in 2006 the paintings were finally returned to the family. Later that year Adele Bloch-Bauer I was sold to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for a then-record price of $135 million. Since 2006 the portrait has been on permanent display at the Neue Galerie, New York City, which Lauder cofounded in 2001. The artwork and the legal case were the subjects of the book The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (2012) by Anne-Marie O’Connor, which was adapted into a film starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds.

Klimts for sale

Klimt’s art remained popular well into the 21st century, as evidenced by the hundreds of millions of dollars his paintings commanded in both private and auction sales. His first portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer garnered $135 million from Lauder, and in 2016 a private buyer purchased the second portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912), from former talk show host Oprah Winfrey for $150 million. By the 2020s a couple of his paintings had surpassed $100 million at auction, and in 2025 Bildnis Elisabeth Lederer (1914–16;Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer), another painting that had once been seized by Nazis, sold at Sotheby’s, New York City, for $236.4 million with fees. It thus became the second most-expensive artwork sold at auction (the most expensive is Salvator Mundi [c. 1500], an oil-on-panel painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. It sold in 2017 for the seemingly impossible sum of $450.3 million with fees).