The Texas Masterpiece : ............................................ Fine Art Gallery & Art Cafe'

The inauguration of the Secession (1898) coincided with a marked change in Klimt's style; and his work became extraordinarily varied. This is in part owned to his exposure to foreign artists' work. The second exhibit displayed side by side Portrait of Sonja Knips and Pallas Athene. Sonja is imbued with a gentle impressionism that never entirely left Klimt's art. Athene is the emblem of the Secession with its "uncompromising frontality, stress upon surface pattern and cascade of golden armour, and shows the influence of Jugendstil painting", especially the painting of Franz von Struck who used the same subject for the seventh exhibition poster of the Munich Secession and in an oil painting. In his Athene, Klimt includes a tiny naked woman in the bottom left corner which becomes a miniature model for many variations on this theme of sexuality and the femme fatale in the future. Athene has a metal frame which was designed by Gustav and executed by his brother Georg.

In the early 1900's Klimt begins to experiment with gold and silver and the inlay of semi-precious stones. Pictures of this period are criticized as not being proper paintings, but objects of applied art. The Stoclet-frieze of 1905-1911, was his most advanced use of the composite medium and his magnificent golden paintings of the years 1907 and 1908. His last works returned to simple use of oil paint.

Hodler had profound influence on Klimt. In response to the influence of his The Chosen One (1901) on the last panel of Klimt's Beethoven-frieze (1902), Hodler states in a 1905 interview:

I like a picture to have clarity, and therefore I like parallelism. In many of my pictures I have chosen four or five figures in order to express one and the same feeling, because I know that repetition of one and the same thing deepens the effect produced. I have a particular preference for five, since an uneven number heightens the regularity of the picture and creates a natural centre-point.... My favourite artists are Durer and the Italian primitives. Of the moderns, I have a specially high opinion of Klimt. In particular, I love his frescoes: in them everything is fluent and still, and he too likes using repetition, which is the source of his splendid decorative effects.... What is so admirable in Klimt is the freedom with which he treats everything. He is a personality who goes entirely his own way, and yet typically Viennese in his grace and tenderness. Of his three great ceiling paintings I only know Philosophy. I like it less than the frescoes and the portraits, but I cannot regard them as a critic would, only as an artist, and then the harmony of colours, his manner of using paint seems to me wonderful. I like Klinger less - he always tries to say too much. Bocklin is a great artist, but somewhat too literary for my taste.

A.S. Levetus' (p. 65-6) excellent description of Klimt's style; on Gold Fish, "the colouring is particular to Klimt, the delicate airiness which seems as if no brush had ever touched it, only a whiff - a puff, and the colour is there." Klimt showed A Lady (unfinished), A Forest of Fir Trees, Still Water, Seashore, and Gold Fish at the thirteenth Secession Exhibition.

Klimt honored at the International Art Exhibition in Rome in 1911 where many important works including The Kiss, Jurisprudence and the Portrait of Emilie Floge were shown. An impressive Austrian contribution at the German Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914.

Least affected by WWI, Klimt spent summers at Attersee. He had been visiting this picturesque lake resort for the Viennese bourgeoisie nearly every year for over a decade with the Floge sisters; first living in Litzlberg, then Kammer, then from 1914-6 Weissenbach at the more mountainous end of the lake. Exceptions were 1913 on Lake Garda and 1917 in Mayrhofen. Klimt loved to swim, row and motor-boat. It was probably the summer of 1905 at Attersee the greater part of his drawings for the Stoclet-frieze were completed. The rest of the year spent in Vienna where he observed a strict routine. Rising early he would walk from his flat in the Westbahnstrasse to the Cafe Tivoli for an elaborate breakfast including a large portion of whipped cream. Here his friends would seek him out since upon returning to his studio where he always had several models on hand, and he was not to be disturbed. His walk home would be through the Schonbrunn park. In earlier years his studio was in the 8th district and after 1914 in Hietzing, where he moved when his Josefstadterstrasse house was demolished that same year.

Between painting he would make rapid life sketches or more elaborate composition studies. Late in the evening he would return to the cafe to relax in the company of friends Hoffmann, Moser and Moll. In this circle he was dubbed, Konig (King). The only excursions taken were to the waters at Bad Gastein (habitual) and his annual or bi-annual visit to the home of the Primavesi family near Olmutz in Moravia. This institution was perhaps begun by Hoffmann whose patrons they originally were. Otto Primavesi took over financial backing of the WW after Warndorfer left for the US after his own considerable resources vanish in the enterprise. Nearly always Klimt, Hoffmann and the sculptor Anton Hanak would attend the annual Schweindlfest celebration, an elaborate barbeque. It took on still greater significance during the war. Klimt appears to have spent New Years in Olmutz in 1917 and 1918. The Primavesi's purchases and commissions of Klimt p. 225.

Emilie Floge was his lifelong companion.

Klimt and Schiele founded the Kunsthalle (Hall of Art) in 1917 to stop the flight of talent abroad.