Nina Levett has recently been featured and was interviewed about the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in the daily newspaper “Die Presse”. She participated in a group interview with three other Austrian designers and artists. The interview took place at Madame Tussaud’s in Vienna, allowing a group photograph of the group to be taken near the wachs statue of Gustav Klimt.
Gustav Klimt was a very interesting personality. He was a bachelor right until his early death in 1918. It is said that he had about 12 children with different women. Mostly he had affairs with the women he painted. But one of his life partners was the fashion designer Emilie Flöge.
He started his very successful life as an artist by studying at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts.
He then proceeded to make murals with his talented brother Ernst and their friend Franz Matsch. The trio was very successful and painted freskos for many famous buildings such as the Burgtheater in Vienna. His father and brother died in the same year and Klimt took financial responsibility for himself and his family (he was one of seven children).
He became very successful when his artworks were liberated from stylistic and thematical conventions, but he was also subject to a lot of criticism which led to him withdrawing from one of his biggest commissions: three paintings for the Vienna university. After this scandal he refused to work for the Austrian State again. He was “punished” by never being made professor at the famous Vienna Art University which would have been a major honour for him at the time.
Even though there always was a lot of controversy about his work, Klimt is one of the most famous Austrian painters to this day. If you enter the phrase “most expensive art” into the Google search machine you will find two of his paintings among the most expensive artworks ever sold to this day. Click here to read the article in “Die Presse Schaufenster”.

Photo copyrights: Die Presse Schaufenster and Teresa Zöttl