A painting exhibition featuring works by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, the forerunner of modernism, will open tomorrow at Vietnam National Library to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.
By Thoa Nguyen in Hanoi
A painting exhibition featuring works by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, the forerunner of modernism, will open tomorrow at Vietnam National Library to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth.
Iconic painting ‘The Kiss’ by Klimt (1862-1918) can be seen all over Hanoi on canvases, lacquer plates and boxes, coffee mugs. Klimt embodies the beauty, seductiveness and boldness of art nouveau, the revolutionary art movement around 1900 in Europe like few other artists.
He lived in a time and a place of a cultural path-breaking period, together with fellow Viennese like Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schonberg.
The show also features portraits of women from the Austrian upper class. His many female portraits and female allegories form a narrative of the Vienna art nouveau era. The works depict a unique eroticism and psychological depth. His landscape paintings are of breathtaking beauty as well.
The exhibition, which also marks the 40th anniversary of Austria-Vietnam relations, will run until June 24 at the library, 31 Trang Thi Street in Hanoi.