Klimt and Schiele: The Artists Who Shocked Europe

[MULTIZ321]

Klimt and Schiele: The Artists Who Shocked Europe
By Cath Pound/ Art/ Art History/ Culture/ BBC/ bbc.com

Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele were two titans of Viennese art who shared a firm friendship and an artistic free will that scandalised many, writes Cath Pound.


At first glance there is little to suggest a connection between Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Klimt was the archetypical sensualist who portrayed Vienna’s elite in gilded finery whilst Schiele, almost three decades his junior, was a tortured egoist whose twisted depictions of the human body shocked and scandalised contemporary audiences. And yet the two men shared a lifelong mutual appreciation and friendship, determined to follow their own artistic visions whatever the cost, until the flu epidemic of 1918 claimed both their lives.

Also see this previous Tug Thread to learn more about Gustav Klimt's Lady in Gold Painting.
Fascinating story told in 'The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer,' by Anne-Marie O’Connor. Scroll down to see the post.
https://www.tugbbs.com/forums/index...-salon-book-critics-poll.184549/#post-1403092


Richard

 

[Talent312]

Somehow, I missed that earlier thread on Klimt.
I'd never heard of him until we saw the movie, "Woman in Gold" (2015).

My DW was so smitten that I bought+framed a print which hangs in our foyer.
And of course, we had to go to NYC to see it in person, among other things.

"Our research into the Woman in Gold true story confirmed that the stunning diamond necklace worn by Adele in the Klimt portrait was taken by Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring. His wife Emmy wore it to lavish Nazi parties."
-Mirror Online

 

[Conan]

The Leopold Museum in Vienna has the world's largest Schiele collection.
https://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/leopoldcollection/masterpieces

 

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How Gustav Klimt's Unfinished 'Ria Munk III' Finally Escaped the Nazis
By Allison McNearney/ Lost Masterpiece/ Daily Beast/ thedailybeast.com

"When Gustav Klimt died in 1918, he left the Portrait of Ria Munk III unfinished on his easel. With subject and artist both dead, the painting’s dramatic life had only just begun.

Ria Munk couldn’t have known when she received the devastating letter from her fiancé at the end of 1911 that the cad was really doing her a favor. In an early-20th century version of romantic cowardice, Hanns Heinz Ewers called off their engagement via post on the grounds that his intended was a hopeless romantic who was out of touch with reality.

At the time, Ewers was an up-and-coming author who had wooed the rich industrialist’s daughter.

His literary reputation would eventually change—he would become known as the “Edgar Allan Poe of Germany” for his macabre works on vampires and such—but so too would his politics.

Ewers was a devout follower of his home country as it marched increasingly toward militarism in the early 20th century, and he would become an unapologetic Nazi during WWII.

A young, Jewish Ria had been spared a dastardly husband by that letter. But she couldn’t have known it at the time. Instead, Ewers’ words broke her fragile, 24-year-old heart, and Munk committed suicide by shooting herself in the chest on Dec. 28, 1911.

In the grief that followed, her parents, Alexander and Aranka Munk, commissioned the most famous artist in Vienna to paint a portrait of their deceased daughter...."

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast


Richard

 

[oldred]

Going to Boston for a couple days next month to see a Klimt/Schiele exhibition. Used to visit the MFA frequently when we lived in NH for a few years.

 

[rosebud5]

Two good documentaries on Amazon Prime that discuss these two artists. One is "Nazi Art Thieves" and the other is "The Rape of Europa."

 

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Obsession: Nudes by Klimt, Schiele and Picasso From the Schofield Thayer Collection
By Sabine Rewald and James Dempsey/ The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ store.metmuseum.org

"This catalogue accompanies The Metropolitan Museum of Art Department of Modern and Contemporary Art exhibition at The Met Breuer.

Publisher, poet, and aesthete, Scofield Thayer (1889–1982) led an intense public life that included the editorship of the prominent avant-garde journal The Dial and often-contentious friendships with literary luminaries such as T. S. Eliot and E. E. Cummings. In the early 1920s, Thayer embarked on an art-buying spree throughout the capitals of Europe, acquiring (among many other things) a number of highly erotic works on paper by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Pablo Picasso. Though these artists were little known or appreciated in America at the time, and though the especially provocative nature of the drawings and watercolors put them outside the mainstream, these works have now taken their place as erotic masterpieces, collected with remarkable foresight and vision. Obsession showcases 52 of these rarely seen works, presenting them within the context of Thayer's remarkable life and tempestuous times, while enhancing our understanding of these three modernist masters.

Sabine Rewald is Jacques and Natasha Gelman Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

James Dempsey is an instructor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and the author of The Tortured Life of Scofield Thayer.

Richard