Works by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt set gold leaf into oil paint in Vienna from about 1900, wrapping society women, embracing lovers and a Judith holding a severed head in flat fields of ornament.

The graphite Male Nude, seen from behind, hands on his head, is dated 29 January 1880, when Klimt was studying architectural painting in Vienna. Its shading is rubbed in, and early work like this may be classed as academic. With his brother Ernst and Franz von Matsch he then painted theatre ceilings and murals. His ceiling paintings for the University of Vienna, of about 1900, were attacked as pornographic, and he took no public commission after them.

In 1897 he helped found the Vienna Secession. His Secession poster for its first show runs Theseus and the Minotaur along the top and stands Athena, the group's emblem, at the right edge. Gold leaf entered his paintings in the Secession's early years. Trips to Venice and Ravenna, with their mosaics, most likely shaped his gold technique. In Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I only her skin is modelled; dress and background merge into gold and silver spirals, squares and eyes. The Kiss sets the man's black and white blocks against the woman's circles and flowers. Many scholars see the pair as Klimt and Emilie Flöge, his lifelong companion.

Death and Life won first prize in Rome in 1911, and in 1915 Klimt repainted its gold background blue. Death, a skull above a robe of black crosses, faces a tangle of bodies from a baby to an old woman. His Attersee landscapes share the figures' dense pattern and press deep space flat.

Sources: Wikidata, Wikipedia, Belvedere, Leopold Museum, Neue Galerie, Art Institute of Chicago, Vienna Museum. Portrait: Josef Anton Trčka.