There is arguably no image in Western art more recognisable than The Kiss. Two figures, entwined and gilded, seem to hover at the edge of a flowering precipice — their robes dissolving into abstract geometric pattern, their faces lost in an embrace that is both ecstatic and strangely still. Gustav Klimt painted it in 1907-08. It has not dated by a single day.
Klimt and the Vienna Secession
Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was trained as a decorative artist and spent his early career producing technically accomplished but essentially conventional academic work. The transformation came in 1897, when Klimt co-founded the Vienna Secession — a movement of artists who broke away from the established Kunstlerhaus to pursue art freed from academic convention.
The Secession's founding motto — Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit — "To every age its art, to art its freedom" — stated a position of radical openness. Under Klimt's presidency, the Secession produced Ver Sacrum, an extraordinarily designed journal, and mounted exhibitions that brought Rodin and the European avant-garde to Vienna.
But Klimt's own work moved toward something stranger and more personal than any movement could contain. The gold paintings — produced roughly between 1903 and 1910 — are unlike anything produced before or since.
The Gold Technique
The defining feature of Klimt's mature work is his use of gold. Real gold leaf, applied to the canvas surface, sits alongside oil paint to create works that shimmer, that change with the light, that seem to exist halfway between painting and craft object.
The technique was inspired by the Byzantine mosaics Klimt encountered in Ravenna in 1903 — the same gold tessellation, the same flattening of space, the same sense of figures existing in a timeless, non-naturalistic world. In The Kiss and in the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, the gold creates a shimmering two-dimensional field against which the figures seem to float.
The Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I — sometimes called the "Austrian Mona Lisa" — is among the most valuable paintings ever sold. Its journey from Vienna to New York (looted by the Nazis, eventually returned to the Bloch-Bauer heirs, and sold for $135 million in 2006) is one of the great restitution stories of modern art.
His Most Celebrated Works
The Kiss (1907–08): A couple embrace on the edge of a flowering meadow, their bodies wrapped in a single golden robe that breaks into geometric pattern as it falls. The woman's face tilts in submission or ecstasy; the man's is buried in her neck. It is an image of total absorption. Our Klimt's The Kiss print captures every detail of the gold-and-pattern surface.
Judith and the Head of Holofernes (1901): The biblical heroine is reimagined as a fin-de-siècle Viennese woman — sensual, dangerous, half-dressed, holding the severed head of the Assyrian general she has seduced and killed. Klimt's Judith is not a religious subject; she is a psychological portrait of female power. Our Judith print.
Portrait of Helene Klimt (1898): A more restrained but equally compelling work — the artist's niece captured before the full gold period, with an intimacy that the later, more monumental works sometimes sacrifice. Our Portrait of Helene Klimt.
Hygieia (1907): A detail from Klimt's Medicine ceiling painting for the University of Vienna (rejected on grounds of obscenity, later destroyed by retreating SS forces in 1945). The surviving figure of Hygieia — Greek goddess of health — stands against the gold, snake coiled around her arm. Our Hygieia print.
The Virgin (1913): A cluster of young women in various states of dream and waking, their bodies and robes dissolving into the ornamental swirl that characterises Klimt's late style. Our The Virgin print.
How to Style Klimt Prints
Klimt's gold palette demands a sympathetic setting. Deep jewel tones — emerald, sapphire, burgundy, deep plum — provide a backdrop that the gold will respond to. A print of The Kiss on a deep teal or forest green wall creates an interior of extraordinary richness.
In a more neutral setting, Klimt's gold will still assert itself — but the effect is different, more object-like, more surprising against the white or pale grey. This can work powerfully in a minimalist interior where the Klimt becomes the single element of baroque complexity in an otherwise restrained room.
Klimt is well-suited to bedrooms — The Kiss in particular, for obvious reasons. In a living room, the portrait works beautifully above a mantelpiece or as the centrepiece of a gallery wall of art nouveau and symbolist works.
From Our Collection
Explore all Klimt prints in our Famous Artists collection:
Klimt prints available from the Galrie collection:
