Gustav Klimt: Drawings & Watercolors [Hardcover]

Rainer Metzger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2005

The best of Klimt's drawings and watercolors, beautifully reproduced in full color.

There is no doubt about Gustav Klimt's greatness as a draftsman. Remarkable above all is the intensely sensual mood that he establishes in his limpid, fluid drawings and watercolors: the pencil or crayon line with which his subjects are described explores and caresses as though the act of drawing was itself a seduction. Klimt's drawings are often highly erotic and explicit, many to such an extent that they have rarely been reproduced. This has made for an unbalanced representation of his work as a draftsman, and a comprehensive survey of his graphic output is long overdue.

Rainer Metzger, a noted art historian, has brought together hundreds of Klimt's drawings and watercolors in a way that enriches our knowledge of the artist and enhances the visual impact of his oeuvre. Klimt's drawings and studies, and his elegantly direct and dangerously intoxicating preparatory sketches, reveal the underlying impetus for and structure of his elaborate canvases. 307 color illustrations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Emerging in the "joyful apocalypse" that was 1900s Vienna, Gustav Klimt embodied the contradictions of a time when Austria's new moralistic fervor and its rising nationalism existed alongside Vienna's decadent demimonde. Metzger's book focuses on Klimt's experiences as an artist, tracking his development from president of the Viennese Secession to his mentorship of Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, as well as tracing his movements from historicism through naturalism to modernism. Though the book touches only lightly on Klimt's personal life, the scandalous nature of his work, his illegitimate children and the haremlike working conditions of his studio, it provides a detailed portrait of the changes and inconsistencies that defined Vienna at the time, when Secessionist principles of freedom from artistic judgment met simultaneous demands for high standards and the "parallel pursuit of collectivity and individuality." The substantial volume also contains hundreds of reproductions of Klimt's works on paper, many of them previously unpublished; though the reproductions are small, they give readers an excellent sense of Klimt's expressionist line, his mosaic-like use of color and his interest in portraits and female nudes. This superior collection of images provides fresh insight into Klimt's aesthetics and the trends and times from which they emerged. (Apr. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Rainer Metzger has written numerous books on art and music, including volumes on van Gogh, Chagall, John Cage, and Erik Satie. He is a professor at the Karlsruhe Academy of Art in Germany.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 399 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson; 1st edition (November 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 050023826X
• ISBN-13: 978-0500238264
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep in the senses, May 24, 2007

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Gustav Klimt: Drawings & Watercolors (Hardcover)

Wonderful. Quick, immediate, and from the heart - or some other organ of animal intensity. Despite the title, there aren't so many watercolors, nearly none. The drawings are superb, though.

Klimt was an intense sensualist. He was often photographed in a floor-length painter's smock, probably wearing nothing underneath. Also, he was commonly seen in his studio amid models not just nude but naked, in intimate and revealing poses, often in couples and more-somes. Add in the fact that Klimt acknowledged three children out of wedlock, and posthumously faced claims of fourteen more. He was clearly a man profoundly moved by female beauty. His life ouvre of painting shows that.

Thousands of his drawings are available to scholars, but the few hundred here show Klimt's passion even more clearly than his lush paintings ever did. Some are studies for his well-known paintings; he was known to do hundreds in preparation for major works. Other sketches can also be traced to known paintings, though with less certainty. Still others are too vividly sensual to have been shown in his own time.

The author includes helpful and revealing biographical notes, largely at the beginning and end of the thick book. I must caution readers with eyes aging like mine are - although the lines of type have wide, airy spacing and low x-height, the text itself looks like 8-point or smaller. Some readers will be so physically uncomfortable from eyestrain that they will lose all the value, or at least enjoyment in those written words. Dear author and publisher: check the book's layout with graying readers before committing it to type, I beg you.

Outside of that, the physical presentation is impeccable. The book is thick, as I said, but that is largely due to the heavy, bright, opaque stock on which the pages are printed - it's a 400 page book with 600 page bulk. I am not criticizing. That quality of paper takes the fine detail of the reproduced drawings beautifully, without glare, and without showing through from the back. It looks and feels luxurious. The book's rich physical sense perfectly complements its visual sensuality. I recommend this book very highly, whether your interest is in Klimt, in arts related to Nouveau, or in simply womanly beauty.

//wiredweird

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, June 19, 2008

By 

Adalberto Javier Romero Salgado (Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gustav Klimt: Drawings & Watercolors (Hardcover)

From all the books I ordered in my last purchase, this has to be my favorite. Not only does it have rare studies and designs from Master Klimt. If there is a book you should buy to understand his works a bit more, this is the one :)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great but small dimensions make for a horrible experience, March 12, 2011

By 

J. Lagges (savannah, ga United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gustav Klimt: Drawings & Watercolors (Hardcover)

The material is obviously great, but I can't fully recommend this book because everything's so tiny. It's like being on a webpage gallery and seeing awesome thumbnails and not being able to appreciate the whole image. If it was bigger 5 stars, highest recommendation; but this, no. That being said, please make a big version. thanks.