Vienna, February 1908. Gustav Klimt exhibits at the Kunstschau, a major art event organized for the sixtieth anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph's reign, his new painting: "Der Kuss". The canvas measures 1.80 by 1.80 meters, an unusual square format. A man and a woman embrace on the edge of a flowering precipice, seen from three-quarter behind. Their bodies disappear under a vast golden robe that covers both figures, ornamented with masculine geometric motifs (black-and-white rectangles) on the man, feminine (colored circles) on the woman. Massive gold leaf clothes nearly the whole canvas, except the woman's face and the hands of both figures, painted in oil with the precision of a Bouguereau. The piece is bought by the Austrian State during the show, for 25,000 crowns. It is today at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. It is perhaps the most reproduced work of Western art in the twentieth century, just after the Mona Lisa.

Klimt is no beginner in 1907. Born on July 14th 1862 in Baumgarten, in the western suburbs of Vienna, son of a goldsmith, he starts painting at 14 at the Vienna School of Applied Arts. At 18, he signs with his brother Ernst and a classmate Franz Matsch a wall-decoration studio that wins the most prestigious commissions of imperial Vienna: the grand staircase ceiling of the Burgtheater (1886-1888), the vault of the museum of art history (1890-1891). At 30, he is a recognized academic painter, decorated. Then everything flips in 1897. With about thirty artists (Joseph Maria Olbrich, Carl Moll, Koloman Moser, later Otto Wagner), he founds the Vienna Secession, a movement that breaks with the official academy to defend a modern art. He becomes president. He writes the program: "To every age its art, to art its freedom".

The golden period (1899-1907)

Klimt travels in Italy in 1899. In Ravenna, in the basilica of San Vitale, he discovers the sixth-century Byzantine mosaics. It is a shock. Gold leaf applied to entire walls, faces treated in mosaic according to a hieratic frontality, ornament as pictorial material. He returns to Vienna with a project. From 1901 on, his paintings integrate gold leaf massively. "Judith I" (1901) opens the series, then "Pallas Athena", then the great cycle for the University of Vienna (which will be destroyed in 1945 by a German fire during the Second World War), then the Adele Bloch-Bauer portraits (the famous "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" of 1907, with an entirely golden ground, sold in 2006 for 135 million dollars by the Bloch-Bauer heirs to Ronald Lauder, who installed it in his Neue Galerie museum in New York).

The gold-leaf technique is demanding. Klimt uses real gold leaf, beaten to 0.0001 millimeter thick, glued to the prepared canvas. He then applies oil paint over or around the gold, playing on transparency. The geometric motifs are engraved into the gold after drying, with metal points. It is a goldsmith's technique, inherited from his father's trade. No other major European painter commits to gold leaf to that extent. That technical singularity is also what makes Klimt so hard to reproduce. Posters that imitate the golden period must play texture, matter, grain: on a thick matte paper that recalls the canvas weave, never on glossy paper that flattens the gold into a vulgar metallic.

Female portraits and Viennese commissions

Klimt lives in Vienna in the Hietzing district, in a studio he shares with his companion Emilie Flöge, a fashion designer and major Secession figure. He never marries. He has fourteen acknowledged illegitimate children with various models. His private life is a Viennese scandal. His female portraits are almost all commissions from upper-class Viennese Jewish bourgeoisie: Sonja Knips (1898), Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1905, sister of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein), Adele Bloch-Bauer (two portraits in 1907 and 1912), Fritza Riedler (1906), Eugenia Primavesi (1913). Each portrait is a long negotiation with the sitter, who comes to the studio dozens of times, sometimes over several years. Klimt knows these women intimately. Despite the ornamentation, his portraits hold a sharp psychology: Adele Bloch-Bauer, sitting at 25 in 1907, is treated with an anxious, almost sad gaze, under the gilding.

"To every age its art, to art its freedom", golden inscription engraved on the facade of the Secession pavilion in Vienna, since 1898.

Living with a Klimt tribute

A poster inspired by Klimt's golden period wants an intimate room and controlled light. Gold leaf, or the reproduced golden effect, shifts color with light. Under warm light (a bedside lamp), it turns copper. Under cold light (daylight), it turns yellow-white. Pick the room according to the effect wanted. An ivory, light beige or pale green wall serves the composition better than a cold white wall. The frame: pale oak for warmth, or matte black with a thin profile for contrast. Avoid doubled gold: a gilded frame on a golden work creates a decorative saturation that snuffs out the composition. The rule that works: a single golden element in the room, and that one is the work.

Size matters. The original "Kiss" is square at 1.80 meters. A large reproduction (90 by 90 or 100 by 100) keeps the monumental impact. In small format (30 by 30 or 40 by 40), the composition loses its decorative flatness and goes back to being anecdotal. For the golden portraits (Adele, Judith), the vertical 50 by 70 or 70 by 100 is ideal and lets you fill a narrow wall between two windows. Ideal rooms: a bedroom, a boudoir, a small dining room, a landing. Not a living room dominated by a large TV, not a kitchen, not an open space.

Three threads to start with

  • A tribute to The Kiss: square composition, gold-and-black palette, geometric motifs. Square format 50 by 50 or 70 by 70.
  • A golden female portrait inspired by Adele Bloch-Bauer: vertical format, ornamental ground, face in reserve. A piece to hang alone on a narrow wall.
  • A pure Viennese ornamental motif (spirals, squares, golden triangles). More accessible than the portrait, ideal in a teenage bedroom or an office.

At Montmartre Poster, tributes to Klimt and Vienna 1900 live in the vintage collection and in the portrait collection for the female figures. For the full historical context, see our article on the Wiener Werkstätte and Vienna 1900, which describes the workshop Klimt collaborated with for ten years, and our note on Mucha and Art Nouveau, Klimt's contemporary at the other end of Central Europe.