Why Is Klimt's The Kiss Covered in Gold? Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) covered paintings such as The Kiss in gold because, from around 1900, he entered what is called his "golden phase", using real gold leaf and dense decorative patterns to turn portraits and allegories into something closer to precious objects or religious icons. Part of the explanation is personal, too: his father was a gold engraver, so working with gold was literally part of the family craft. The result made Klimt the most famous painter of turn-of-the-century Vienna, and a symbol of the decorative style known as Art Nouveau.

A craftsman's son

Klimt was born on 14 July 1862 in Baumgarten, near Vienna. His family was not wealthy. He trained at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, the Kunstgewerbeschule, which prepared students for decorative and architectural work rather than for gallery painting.

With his brother Ernst and a fellow student, Franz von Matsch, he formed a "Company of Artists" that painted murals for public buildings, including the grand staircases of the Burgtheater, Vienna's imperial theatre. Early on, then, Klimt was a successful, conventional decorator for the establishment.

Breaking away: the Vienna Secession

By the 1890s Klimt had grown frustrated with the conservative official art world. In 1897 he became a founding member and the first president of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists who broke away from the established artists' association to promote new, international and modern art. Their motto, inscribed over the door of their exhibition building, was "To every age its art, to art its freedom".

The university scandal

Klimt's break with tradition led to a public fight. He was commissioned to paint three huge ceiling paintings for the University of Vienna, representing Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence. Instead of reassuring images of progress, he painted dark, dreamlike scenes full of naked bodies. Critics attacked them as pornographic, and they were never installed. It was his last public commission. The paintings were later destroyed by fire in 1945.

The golden phase

Freed from public commissions, Klimt focused on private patrons, especially portraits of women from Vienna's wealthy families, and on allegorical works. From about 1900 he increasingly used gold leaf and flat, mosaic-like ornament. Some scholars link this style to the Byzantine mosaics he saw in Italy, which combine human figures with shimmering gold backgrounds.

The two most famous works of this period are The Kiss (1907–08) and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907).

The Kiss

The Kiss shows a couple embracing at the edge of a flowery meadow, wrapped together in a robe of gold. The man's clothing is covered in rectangular black-and-white blocks; the woman's in round, colourful flowers, as if the patterns themselves expressed male and female. Their faces and hands are painted naturally, but their bodies almost disappear into ornament. The painting is now in the Belvedere museum in Vienna and is one of the most reproduced images in the world.

The Woman in Gold

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I has a dramatic later history. Like many works owned by Jewish families in Austria, it was taken by the Nazis. After a long legal battle, Adele's niece, Maria Altmann, won its return, and in 2006 the painting was sold for a reported US$135 million. The story was later told in the film Woman in Gold.

Landscapes and a quiet influence

Klimt also painted serene, square-format landscapes, many of them around the Attersee, a lake where he spent his summers. He encouraged younger artists, above all Egon Schiele, whose raw, angular style owes a debt to Klimt.

He died in Vienna on 6 February 1918 of pneumonia after a stroke, leaving many works unfinished. Today his paintings are among the most expensive artworks ever sold.

Learn with Klimt: English phrases about art and style

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to break with tradition	to do something in a new way	The architect broke with tradition.
all that glitters is not gold	attractive things aren't always valuable	The app looks great, but all that glitters is not gold.
to cause a stir	to make people excited or upset	His paintings caused a stir.
ahead of the curve	more modern than others	Her designs were ahead of the curve.
a work of art	something beautifully made	This cake is a work of art.

Try this: Look at an image of The Kiss. Write three English sentences describing it, using "cause a stir" and "break with tradition", and one colour or pattern word you didn't know before.