Shares the events that shaped the creation of the painter's most famous portrait, covering such topics as the story of the salon hostess who was his model, contributing factors in turn-of-the-century Vienna, and the painting's fate.

Gustav Klimt's exotic, sensuous paintings recall the art of ancient civilizations - their patterns and ornamentation reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics and Egyptian murals. But from what context did these masterworks spring? This beautifully illustrated book is a guide to the life and work of Gustav Klimt. Klimt is one of the most influential artists of the Art Nouveau movement, first achieving fame as a decorative painter before turning to portraiture...

The summer of 1898 finds Austria terrorized by a killer who the press calls "Vienna's Jack the Ripper." Four bodies have already been found, but when the painter Gustav Klimt's female model becomes the fifth victim, the police finger him as the culprit. The artist has already scandalized Viennese society with his erotically charged modern paintings. Who better to take the blame for the crimes that have plagued the city? This is, however, far from...

"Human Dispositions explores new conventions for posing and positioning human figures in pictorial, architectural, and theatrical space in Europe in the decades leading up to WWI. The author contends that questions of "disposition" are vital to understanding a key transitional period in the history of Western modernism. Around 1885, avant-garde artists began to present human figures in strictly frontal, lateral, and dorsal postures. The effect, compared...

Gustav Klimt's ornate art expresses the apocalyptic atmosphere of Vienna's upper middle-class society around the turn of the 20th century - a society devoted to the cultivation of aesthetic awareness and the cult of pleasure. This book is a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work.

The life and work of the famous Viennese painter Gustav Klimt are explored by his favorite cat.