KLIMT

We have a multitude of paintings hanging at home, nearly all of them originals, either painted by us or by friends (a few of them who are professional artists). We only have a couple of reproductions of works by famous painters hanging on a wall, Of the thousands of paintings that we like, one may ask why choose those particular ones to buy and hang up on the wall?

First, these artists are great favourites, and to have something of theirs on a wall to see daily and admire gives us great satisfaction. Second, the reproductions are facsimile paintings that are done by professional copiers who have great skill in copying faithfully the art work. They work in oils and the colours are brilliant and reproduce wonderfully the spirit of the original. This is something admirable in itself. Third, by viewing such a work in its original dimensions and skilfully painted in the same medium as the original one gets a much better idea of the artist's vision (compared say to a print or a photon in an art book, or a picture on Google).

One of the reproduction paintings we have is Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss". Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. In addition to his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes.

Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods. Early in his artistic career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he developed a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his "golden phase", many of which include gold leaf. Klimt's work was an important influence on his younger contemporary Egon Schiele.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.