Klimt's Golden Phase
For about ten years Gustav Klimt painted with real gold leaf, and the paintings from those years, The Kiss above all, are the ones most people know him by.
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About the series
Klimt's father was a gold engraver, and Klimt trained in decorative art before he turned to painting. Gold appears early, in Pallas Athene of 1898 and Judith of 1901. After he saw the Byzantine mosaics at Ravenna in 1903 it took over: flat fields of gold and pattern, with faces and hands painted in soft, realistic flesh tones in the middle of them.
The Kiss, from 1907 to 1908, two lovers wrapped in one golden robe on a flowered meadow, is in the Belvedere in Vienna. The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, finished in 1907, was returned to her family after a long legal case and is now in the Neue Galerie in New York. The Tree of Life and Fulfilment were designs for a mosaic frieze in the dining room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels.
The Kiss and Adele are square and suit a central wall. The two Judiths are tall and narrow.
