Known for its lavish balls and even more lavish cakes, Vienna Dropdown content is overflowing with art. If there’s one image that encapsulates the city, it’s of an elegant, gold-clad muse staring out at the viewer with an unsettling beauty.
No, not Conchita Wurst, but the women of Gustav Klimt’s paintings. A tour of his artworks not only takes you to Vienna’s finest galleries, but provides a window on the city at the turn of the twentieth century.
In 1897, a group of artists frustrated with the constraints of
Displayed inside, Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze (1902) depicts the quest for happiness. Its parade of strange characters – including Death, Madness, Lasciviousness and Wantonness – are all obstacles to true joy, which is found, in the last panel, through art, poetry and music in the form of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
View from St. Stephen's Cathedral over Stephansplatz square © Sergey Novikov/Shutterstock
Klimt bridged the avant-garde and traditional decorative arts. He trained at what’s now the Museum of Applied Art (MAK), where you can see sketches for his Stoclet Frieze alongside objects by contemporaries in the Wiener Werkstätte.
Early in his career, he also helped to decorate several public buildings with murals. In the
To see Klimt’s most famous works, visit the
But Klimt – and
Fittingly, it’s shown alongside numerous paintings by his successor Egon Schiele, whose work brutally exposes the psychological unease lurking in the city Freud called home, an unease that simmers beneath the surface of Klimt’s own perfectly gilded canvases.
All museums listed are in central Vienna; to do them all justice, give yourself at least two days. See
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