The Kiss - Gustav Klimt - Athena 1976 - Framed Print - 16"H x 12"W

The Kiss - Gustav Klimt - Athena 1976 - Framed Print - 16"H x 12"W

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism.

As he developed a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic.

The Kiss (Lovers) was originally painted between 1907 and 1908, the highpoint of Klimt's "Golden Period", when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs and organic forms.

The painting is widely considered a masterpiece of the early modern period and is considered Klimt's most popular work.

It is suggested the female was the model known as 'Red Hilda'; she bears strong resemblance to the model in his Woman with feather boa, Goldfish and Danaë.