Gustav klimt

Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) was the founding president of the Vienna Secession, the group of artists who in 1897 broke from the conservative Austrian arts establishment to pursue a synthesis of fine art and decorative design under the motto Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit — "To every age its art, to art its freedom." Born in Vienna in 1862 to a gold engraver, Klimt absorbed his father's craft into his painting practice, developing a style that layered representational figures against flat, richly ornamented backgrounds drawing on sources as diverse as ancient Egyptian art, Greek vase painting, and Japanese prints. His influence on Art Nouveau and on the broader decorative ambitions of European modernism was enormous and immediate.

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