Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) Arguably Vienna’s most renowned painter, Gustav Klimt epitomizes the Viennese Art Nouveau movement (Jugendstil). Trained at Vienna’s School of Applied Arts, he gained favor in Academic art circles, won important commissions and was awarded the gold Distinguished Service Cross for artistic merit in 1888.

However, he became frustrated with the limitations of established academic style and formed a group of artists, the “Secessionist” movement. In 1897, they built and launched the Secession gallery in Vienna, in which Klimt painted a frieze based on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

In 1903 Klimt, with Josef Hoffman and Koloman Moser, founded the “Wiener Werkstätte,” an arts-and-crafts guild that bridged the gap between “Fine Art” and decorative design of household objects. His paintings of this period, such as The Kiss (1908), use ornamental modernist motifs, often with gold leaf “woven” into the colorful design. What started as rebellion became a popular style — The Kiss was acquired by Austria’s National Museum and in 1909 he was commissioned to decorate the Stoclet Palace in Brussels. Klimt died of a stroke in 1918 in Vienna.

The detailed variety of ornamentation within Klimt’s Portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer and Emilie Flöge and other works such as The Maiden, The Tree of Life, and the Stoclet Frieze have inspired the artists at FREY WILLE to create an entire Klimt collection, one of its “Hommage” editions. These interpretations of Klimt’s Viennese Art Nouveau are depicted in precious enamel with 24-carat gold décor.