An Ode to Gustav Klimt-My Style

 Hi everyone. I hope you're having or have had a nice weekend, depending on when you read this post.

I'm back today with another art journal page for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's "What's Your Style?" challenge at Art Journal Journey.

My page today uses an acetate image from Stamperia's  Klimt collection.  I chose the face of Adele Bloch-Bauer from the pieces in this set to be the star of my page. You probably recognize this face since Bloch-Bauer  was the woman in the portrait also called  The Woman in Gold or the Lady in Gold. When I looked up Adele Bloch-Bauer,  I'd forgotten that Klimt had actually painted 2 portraits of this woman.

On my page I used some gold paint as an ode to the original painting. Before I had used the gold paint, I rubbed a slightly wet side of a stencil  down on my paper so the slightly wet stencil created just a shadow of an image. I didn't use a lot of other gold or metallic paint because I didn't want to take away from the acetate image.  I also did some stamping, and I added bits of printed tissue paper, some cloth trim as well as a couple of metal flowers.

Here is the 1907 portrait just in case you aren't sure what I am talking about, but I'm guessing this painting is pretty universally recognized.

As I'm not an expert on Klimt, (and you might know more about this art piece than me), but the story of this painting is fascinating. In case you aren't familiar with this story,  let me share just a bit about of this story. The portrait now hangs in New York City after a  trial between the family of Bloch-Bauer and the Austrian government. 

Adele Bloch was born in 1881 and was married to Ferdinand Bauer. The couple lived in Austria, and they were a patron to the arts. Bloch-Bauer died childless in 1925 from meningitis, but before her death Gustav Klimt painted 2 portraits of her.  The Woman in Gold was one of them.

 During the Second World War, the family lost the painting. They were Jewish, and as with many Jewish families during the Holocaust, the Nazi's confiscated much of their valuable possessions. After the war,  the painting showed up in the Austria's Belvedere Museum. The museum claimed the painting had been willed to them. Austria considered this painting to speak for them as a country, since Klimt was from Austria,  but the family wanted it returned since it had been wrongly taken by the Nazi's. Shortly after the war ended, Austria made a law saying that if any wrongly seized artwork wanted to be removed from the country, the person(s) taking it would need to donate some of their other art to Austrian museums  before they would receive the needed permit for the to-be returned art to leave the country.

When the family first made requests for the return of their stolen artwork, their artwork was traced back to  the Belvedere Gallery and also even to Hitler's private collection. After  initial legal precedings in Austria, some of the family art was returned to them.  However, there were no Klimt pieces in this initial return.

In 1998 Austria changed their laws about the return of Nazi stolen artifacts and art. Austria at that point still refused to return any Klimt paintings to the family, although they did return some other pieces to the family. Austria stated the the painting no longer belonged to the family and would not acknowledge that it had been taken from them. That is when the niece of Bloch-Bauer, Maria Altmann, filed a civil lawsuit against the country to get the painting returned.

The cost of this trial was extremely high (over a million US dollars).  As a way to avoid these high costs, Altmann's case against  Austria was handled in the United States Court system (since Maria Altmann lived in the US). There was a trial where it was shown that 3 points of international law had been violated, and after going all the way to US supreme court, Maria Altmann and the family of Adele Bloch-Bauer won. The painting was returned. When Maria Altmann died she specified that she wanted the portrait to be enjoyed by everyone and that it should not be put into a private collection. That is why it now hangs at the Neue Gallery in New York City.

 There have been some films made about it including "The Woman in Gold" from 2015  starring Helen Mirren (recommended if you haven't seen it.)  You might even know about some other films that I am not familiar with. 

I am sure there are also many books written about this painting also, but I can highly recommend this one by Anne Marie O'Connor.

I read this book several years ago, but it is quite memorable.

And in case you aren't familiar with the other portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, here is that one, painted in 1912.

It is still beautifully done, but quite different in many ways from the Woman in Gold.

I hope you've not only enjoyed my journal page today, but also a little art history, even if it isn't new to you.

Thanks for visiting my blog. Enjoy what's left of the weekend.