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Orchard with Roses Gustav Klimt 1912
Gustav Klimt loved art, women and Lake Attersee
On the shores of Lake Attersee in the Salzkammergut region, Gustav Klimt found the peace and inspiration he sought for his work. Impressive landscape paintings, in which his enthusiasm for the floral colourfulness of nature can be seen, were created there.
Lake Attersee: a source of inspiration
Uncountable number of colours and colour sounds radiate billions of flowers at the same time with lime or spicy, sweet or tart fragrances.
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Gustav Klimt
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The Attersee
Painters, composers and literary figures were inspired by the beauty of nature and the atmosphere at Lake Attersee. The Attersee Villas, where painter Gustav Klimt, composer Gustav Mahler and writer Heimito von Doderer spent their summer holidays, still bear witness to a glorious past: The villas Orléans and Ransonnet became the hotels Villa Weiss and Grafengut, the Villa Paulick offers guided tours and the Villa Polese, a private residence, repeatedly opens its doors for readings.
In 2024, the cultural capital of Bad Ischl and the Salzkammergut will showcase its cultural diversity under the motto "Culture is the new salt". New impulses for the future are in focus, so is the diversity of historically rooted and contemporary art and culture.
A lake as a source of inspiration
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Unterach am Attersee media_content.tooltip.skipped -
Lake Attersee media_content.tooltip.skipped -
Lake Atter media_content.tooltip.skipped -
Trittboot am Attersee media_content.tooltip.skipped -
Salzkammergut Lake Attersee media_content.tooltip.skipped -
Klimt roses - rose garden propagation Klimt villa media_content.tooltip.skipped -
Salzkammergut Lake Attersee media_content.tooltip.skipped
Experience Klimt
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Gustav Klimt: Artist and personality
He loved art, life and women: The painter Gustav Klimt was not only one of the most important representatives of Art Nouveau and co-founder of the Vienna Secession, but also a true man of pleasure.
Born in 1862, in Baumgarten bei Wien, he started his career with history paintings. Starting around 1890, he developed his distinct expressionistic style with typically shaped ornaments.
In 1897, he left the Künstlerhaus and co-founded the Viennese Secession – as a challenge to the state’s restrictions on artistic expression. Klimt’s penchant for enjoying the finer things in life is legendary and found its expression among other things in opulent dinner parties. His numerous affairs with ladies of high society are still the subject of much speculation today. In the last years of his life, he became particularly sensitive to the sensual power of nature. He painted deserted landscapes in which time seems to stand still. They are pictures of an earthly paradise in the eternal summer. He died in Vienna on February 6, 1918.
Those who come to Austria to admire Klimt's works also get to see architecture at its finest - whether in the modern Leopold Museum, in the Vienna Secession or in the imperial halls of the Upper Belvedere. A special gem is the Klimt Villa in Vienna-Hietzing, whose garden house the painter used as a studio and workshop during his last creative period.
Interesting facts about Gustav Klimt
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Lover and admirer of women
“With a woman who is in love, one can do anything she wants,” is a thought-provoking quote from one of the most illustrious Austrian painters ever, the Art Nouveau artist Gustav Klimt. He knew how to capture attention, both with his art as well as his unique personality and savoir-vivre. How the painter, who preferred to spend his days dressed in a blue shift, won over so many hearts remains his secret. One can safely assume that the rose, queen of all flowers, might have played an important role not only in his paintings, but also in his courtship. Like no other flower, the rose signals love and passion - a promise the sensual artist could not withstand.
Klimt loved and admired women, and although he was never married, he had seven children with several women. Aside from his passionate affair with his muse Emilie Flöge, his “affaires d’amour” with the 19 year-old Alma Schindler (who later became Alma Mahler-Werfel) as well as numerous models such as Maria Ucicky and Marie (Mizzi) Zimmermann, are well known. His relationship with the emancipated fashion designer Emilie Flöge, however, lasted his entire life. She seems to have been his “Lebensmensch”.
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Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt loved good food - and liked to go overboard. According to fellow artists, "he took his sumptuous meals with obvious pleasure, always two to three portions of each dish, and if he was invited to friends' houses, two more plates were always provided for Klimt." The artist often took his breakfast at the Meierei Tivoli near Schönbrunn Palace Park, with coffee, Gugelhupf, and whipped cream; in the evening he liked to choose a Girardi roast or veal sweetbread à la Tegetthoff. In Vienna's restaurants and cafés, it is easy to see why the bon vivant held these timeless classics in such high esteem.
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Portrait of Emilie Flöge by Gustav Klimt Wien Museummedia_content.tooltip.skipped -
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Gustav Klimt, Expectation, detail MAK - Museum of Applied Artsmedia_content.tooltip.skipped -
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Leopold Museum media_content.tooltip.skipped
