Paintings

Twenty-four paintings by Gustav Klimt — from the revolutionary works of the Vienna Secession through the legendary Golden Phase to the richly colored landscapes of his final years. Klimt was the most provocative artist of fin-de-siècle Vienna: his university ceiling paintings were condemned as pornographic; his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer became the most expensive painting ever sold; The Kiss remains one of the most reproduced images in the world. His work fuses Byzantine mosaic, Japanese woodblock, and Art Nouveau ornament with an unflinching eroticism that scandalized Viennese society. The gold paintings — where figures emerge from fields of geometric ornament like icons from a jeweled shrine — are unlike anything else in Western art. The late landscapes, painted during summers at Lake Attersee, dissolve architecture and foliage into shimmering tapestries of pure color.