Description
In 1902, Klimt painted the Beethoven Frieze for the Fourteenth Vienna Secession exhibition in celebration of 75th anniversary of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven's death. It was featured alongside a monumental polychrome sculpture by Max Klinger. Meant for the exhibition only, the frieze was painted directly on the walls with light materials. [3]
The frieze is large, standing at 2.15 m (7 ft 1 in) high with a width of 34.14 m (112.0 ft). [4] The entire work weighs four tons. [5] It is inspired by the composer Richard Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth symphony. [2]
The frieze combined Ancient Greek, Byzantine, early medieval, and Japanese art styles, while incorporating Klimt's characteristic use of gold leaf. Its left side begins with genii floating toward a knight, driving him to champion the driving force: happiness. The middle panel displays personified threats to the striving (imagined as male) individual, such as lust and sexuality's then feared consequence: syphilis. Controversial in its time, this scene prefigures Picasso's putative brothel scene in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. The frieze's (as solution to the problem of lust, or libido, gone astray) and culminates choir singing in a loving embrace directly referencing Beethoven's "kiss" of all humanity in his symphony [6] The symbolism of the frieze was laid out in great detail to the original public through a published exhibition brochure.
Left wall: "the yearning for happiness; the sufferings of weak mankind; ..."
"... their petition to the well-armed strong one, to take up the struggle for happiness, impelled by motives of compassion and ambition.
Middle wall: the hostile forces;
Typhon the giant, against whom even gods fought in vain; his daughters, the three
Gorgons, who symbolize lust and lechery, intemperance and gnawing care. The longings and wishes of mankind fly over their heads."
Right wall: "the yearning for happiness is assuaged in poetry. The arts lead us to the ideal realm in which we all can find pure joy, pure happiness, pure love. ..."
"... Choir of angels from Paradise. 'Joy, lovely spark of heaven's fire, this embrace for all the world."
[7]
History
In 1903, art collector Carl Reininghaus acquired the Klimt's Beethoven Frieze to prevent its destruction after the 14th Vienna Secession. In appreciation for preserving his work, Klimt provided Reininghaus with over 100 preparatory sketches, one of which was sold to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1964. Industrialist August Lederer was encouraged by his wife, Serena, to acquire the frieze and many of these sketches in 1915. [8]
During the 1938 German annexation of Austria, the widowed Serena Lederer was forced to abandon her art collection as she fled to Hungary to avoid Nazi persecution for her Jewish origin. After the painting was recovered by Allied forces from the Altaussee salt mine in Austria in 1945, it was returned to Serena's son, Erich Lederer. [8] In 1973, Erich sold the frieze for $750,000 (half of its purported market value) to the Austrian government in exchange for Chancellor Bruno Kreisky granting export licenses for the Lederer family's other Klimt pieces. [5]
Over ten years, Manfred Koller of the Austrian Federal Monuments Office restored the work. After the Secession Building built a climate-controlled basement room in 1985, the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere permanently loaned the piece, publicly displaying the piece since 1986. In 2020, museum visitors were provided with headphones to hear Beethoven's Ninth Symphony while viewing the frieze in celebration of the composer's 250th birthday. [2]
In 2013, some members of the Lederer family filed a claim for the Beethoven Frieze to be returned. However, the Austrian Art Restitution Advisory Board definitively rejected this request in 2015, finding that Erich Lederer had voluntarily negotiated the sale price and that the Austrian government had significantly invested in its restoration at the Secession Building. [9]
Gustav Klimt 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. Amongst 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.
Max Klinger was a German artist who produced significant work in painting, sculpture, prints and graphics, as well as writing a treatise articulating his ideas on art and the role of graphic arts and printmaking in relation to painting. He is associated with symbolism, the Vienna Secession, and Jugendstil the German manifestation of Art Nouveau. He is best known today for his many prints, particularly a series entitled Paraphrase on the Finding of a Glove and his monumental sculptural installation in homage to Beethoven at the Vienna Secession in 1902.
The Neue Galerie New York is a museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design located in the William Starr Miller House at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Established in 2001, it is one of the most recent additions to New York City's famed Museum Mile, which runs from 83rd to 105th streets on Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The Vienna Secession is an art movement, closely related to Art Nouveau, that was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, including Josef Hoffman, Koloman Moser, Otto Wagner and Gustav Klimt. They resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists in protest against its support for more traditional artistic styles. Their most influential architectural work was the Secession exhibitions hall designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich as a venue for expositions of the group. Their official magazine was called Ver Sacrum, which published highly stylised and influential works of graphic art. In 1905 the group itself split, when some of the most prominent members, including Klimt, Wagner, and Hoffmann, resigned in a dispute over priorities, but it continued to function, and still functions today, from its headquarters in the Secession Building. In its current form, the Secession exhibition gallery is independently led and managed by artists.
The Stoclet Palace is a mansion in Brussels, Belgium. It was designed by the Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann for the Belgian financier Adolphe Stoclet. Built between 1905 and 1911 in the Vienna Secession style, it is located at 279–281, avenue de Tervueren/Tervurenlaan, in the Woluwe-Saint-Pierre municipality of Brussels. Considered Hoffman's masterpiece, the residence is one of the 20th century's most refined and luxurious private houses.
The Kiss is an oil-on-canvas painting with added gold leaf, silver and platinum by the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. It was painted at some point in 1907 and 1908, during the height of what scholars call his "Golden Period". It was exhibited in 1908 under the title Liebespaar as stated in the catalogue of the exhibition. The painting depicts a couple embracing each other, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is an oil painting on canvas, with gold leaf, by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Viennese and Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt's golden phase. It was the first of two depictions of Adele by Klimt—the second was completed in 1912; these were two of several works by the artist that the family owned.
The Klimt University of Vienna Ceiling Paintings, also known as the Faculty Paintings, were a series of paintings made by Gustav Klimt for the ceiling of the University of Vienna's Great Hall between the years of 1900–1907. In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to paint the ceiling. Upon presenting his paintings, Philosophy, Medicine and Jurisprudence, Klimt came under attack for 'pornography' and 'perverted excess' in the paintings. None of the paintings would go on display in the university.
Josef Hoffmann was an Austrian-Moravian architect and designer. He was among the founders of Vienna Secession and co-establisher of the Wiener Werkstätte. His most famous architectural work is the Stoclet Palace, in Brussels, (1905–1911) a pioneering work of Modern Architecture, Art Deco and peak of Vienna Secession architecture.
The Secession Building is an exhibition hall in Vienna, Austria. It was completed in 1898 by Joseph Maria Olbrich as an architectural manifesto for the Vienna Secession, a group of rebel artists that seceded from the long-established fine art institution.
Tobias G. Natter is an Austrian art historian and internationally renowned art expert with a particular expertise in "Vienna 1900".
The Vienna Museum is a group of museums in Vienna consisting of the museums of the history of the city. In addition to the main building in Karlsplatz, the group includes some locations, numerous specialised museums, musicians' residences and archaeological excavations.
Serena (Szeréna) Pulitzer Lederer was an Austro-Hungarian art collector and the spouse of the industrial magnate August Lederer, close friend of Gustav Klimt and instrumental in the constitution of the collection of Klimt's art pieces.
Maximilian Lenz was an Austrian painter, graphic artist and sculptor. Lenz was a founding member of the Vienna Secession; during his career's most important period, he was a Symbolist, but later his work became increasingly naturalistic. He worked in a variety of media, including oils, watercolours, lithography and metal reliefs.
Christian M. Nebehay was an Austrian art dealer, art collector and author. He became internationally known – particularly in the art world – for his works on Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.
August Lederer, was an Austrian industrialist and art collector whose art collection was looted by Nazis. He helped promote the artists of the Vienna Secession, notably Gustav Klimt.
Eleonore Stiasny also known as Nora Stiasny née Zuckerkandl was an Austrian Jewish art collector murdered in the Holocaust.
Women Friends (1916-1917) is a painting by Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. Alternatively known as The Friends, or Girlfriends II, among others, the work was destroyed by fire in 1945 alongside several other of Klimt's paintings in the burning of Schloss Immendorf.
Jenny Steiner was an Austro-Hungarian art collector, patron of the arts and factory owner expropriated under the Nazis.
Schubert at the Piano was an oil-on-canvas painting by Gustav Klimt, from 1899. It depicts Austrian musician and composer Franz Schubert mid-performance. The painting shows Schubert seated at a piano surrounded by onlookers, bathed in candlelight. Klimt painted it in 1899 in the style of Art Nouveau, which focused on the use of organic shapes and flowing lines. The painting may have been commissioned in 1898 by Greek industrialist Nikolaus Dumba. In 1945, the work was destroyed in the fire at Schloss Immendorf. The image pictured is a photograph of the work.
