Gustav Klimt – Lady with Hat and Feather Boa (1909)

Louisiana poster with the work, Lady with Hat and Feather Boa (1909), by the Austrian artist, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). With Louisiana's exhibition, Vienna 1900 - Art and Design, in 1991, for the first time in Scandinavia, you could see a comprehensive presentation of the breakthrough of modern art in Vienna around the year 1900—including not least the visual arts, of which Gustav Klimt was one of the central exponents in the period.

Klimt also painted landscapes, but among his most prominent works are precisely portraits—and almost only of women. He was preoccupied with surfaces, skin, the clothes around the body, the woman's hair, a tribute to passion and eroticism, many believe.

Klimt was never interested in expressing his personality, in the painter's self-representation. Here he was in direct contrast to, for example, an Edvard Munch, who expressed his tormented self in his pictures of women.

From a successful painter of architectural decorations early in his career, Klimt developed his more personal style, which was considered controversial—culminating in a planned series of pictures for the auditorium of the University of Vienna. The first picture from here was exhibited in the year 1900 and caused great consternation with naked figures from the child to the elderly in their struggle for life.

Klimt then met opposition to his art for the first time. On the other hand, the exhibition was sold out by 35,000 visitors. Klimt had to retire and was not given any more public assignments.