Читать книгу Gustav Klimt - Patrick Bade - Страница 5

These early commissions established Klimt as a successful and prominent artist. Following the death of his father and brother Ernst in 1892, there seems to have been a distinct cooling-off in the working relationship between Klimt and Matsch as Klimt began to explore more adventurous subjects.

In 1894, Matsch moved out of their shared studio, and in 1897 Klimt, together with his closest friends, resigned from the Künstlerhausgenossenschaft (the Cooperative Society of Austrian Artists) to form a new movement known as the Secession, of which he was immediately elected president.

The Golden Knight (Life is a Fight), 1903.

Oil, tempera and gold on canvas, 103.5 × 103.7 cm.

Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan.

The Beethoven Frieze: Suffering Humanity, Ambition, Compassion and the Knight in Shining Armor (left panel, detail), 1902.

Casein on plaster, height: 220 cm.

Secession, Vienna.

The Secession was a great success, holding both a first and a second exhibition in 1898. The movement made enough money to commission their very own building, designed for them by the architect Joseph Maria Olbrich. Above the entrance was their motto: “To each age its art, to art its freedom”. The Secession not only came to represent the best of Austrian art, but was also successful in the bringing together of Viennese-French Impressionist and Belgian Naturalist works, which had never before been seen by the Austrian public.

Klimt was undoubtedly the central figure in this young and dynamic movement, but his success as a modern artist went hand in hand with the loss of his status as an accepted and established painter.

As he moved away from his traditional beginnings, he soon found himself at the centre of a series of scandals, which were to change his entire career.