Beethoven Frieze (view of the room)

1902 · Secession Building, Vienna

other

Discouraged by the storm of public protest which greeted his paintings for the Aula of Vienna University, Klimt laid aside work on this increasingly unrewarding commission to devote himself to his only true fresco, his Beethoven Frieze (1902; Secession Building, Vienna; restored 1985). Painted for the 14th Secession exhibition (1902), the frieze was intended as part of the group's homage to the Leipzig artist Max Klinger, whose polychrome sculpture, the Beethoven Monument (Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig), formed the centrepiece of the show. The centre wall (The Hostile Powers, the Titan Typhoeus, the Three Gorgons) was conceived as a pictorial paraphrase of the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and depicted the struggle for happiness undertaken by a knight in armour who, vanquishing the 'hostile powers' (the giant Typhon, the three Gorgons, disease, insanity and death), leads 'weak humanity' into the realm of the arts.

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About the Artist

Gustav Klimt

1862 – 1918

Austrian painter and graphic artist. He was just 14 when he won a scholarship to the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna. Together with his brother Ernst Klimt (1864-1892) and his fellow student Franz Matsch (1861-1942), between 1882 and 1892, he carried out a number of major commissions for wall and ceiling paintings. During this period, he was awarded the Golden Order of Merit and the Imperial prize. In 1897, he was a joint founder of the journal Ver Sacrum and the Vienna Secession, which he left in 1905 with a number of his friends, including Josef Hoffmann and Otto Wagner, in order to found the Wiener Werksttte. In 1917, he became an honorary member of the Vienna and Munich academies. Klimt ranks amongst the leading representatives of Viennese Jugendstil. While his early paintings still betrayed the influence of Hans Makart, after the death of his brother, he moved away from academic painting and developed his own two-dimensional style, in which representational elements are combined with ornament to achieve a decorative effect. Although his style caused several scandals in his own day (e.g. his ceiling paintings for Vienna University, 1900-03), it also made him a pioneer of modernism. His major works include the Beethoven frieze (1902), Judith (1901), the Kiss (1908) and his wall mosaics for the Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1909-11). As a leading exponent of Art Nouveau, Klimt is considered one of the greatest decorative painters of the 20th century. His depictions of the femme fatale and his drawings treating the theme of female sexuality have assured him a place in the history of erotic art. He is remembered for his role in the formation of the Vienna Secession, the radical group of Austrian artists of which he became the first president in 1897, and also for the frequent scandals and protests that marked his later career.

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