The Kiss Painting
The Kiss Painting

The Kiss Painting

$299.90

Size: 40cm x 50cm [16" x 20"]

40cm x 50cm [16" x 20"]
50cm X 60cm [20" x 24"]
60cm X 90cm [24" x 36"]
75cm X 100cm [30" x 40"]
90cm X 120cm [36" x 48"]
100cm x 140cm [40" x 56"]
100cm X 150cm [40" x 60"]
120cm x 160cm [48" x 64"]
120cm X 180cm [48" x 70"]
135cm X 200cm [54" x 79"]

SELECT FINISH OR FRAME OPTION: Streched

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Rolled
Black Floating Frame
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Wood Floating Frame
Light Gold Floating Frame
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Description

The Kiss by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was a popular Austrian symbolist painter, specifically renowned for his figurative, patterned, and ornamented artworks. Klimt’s works follow many styles; some of them include allegories, portraits, landscapes, etc. Many of his arts are focused on the female body that gives off frank eroticism. Among his numerous masterpieces, ‘The Kiss’ is particularly the most exquisite art piece interpreted for many generations of art from classic to romantic, modern, and contemporary.

The painting is highly decorative, with added gold leaf, silver, and platinum that easily reminds of ancient byzantine art. This art piece is marked by his ‘golden phase’ that gained him many positive critical reactions along with financial success. ‘The Kiss’ has been mesmerizing the audience since 1908 with its visual manifestations.

 

Available Sizes : 

  • 40cm 50cm [16" x 20"]
  • 50cm X 60cm [20" x 24"]
  • 60cm X 90cm [24" x 36"]
  • 75cm X 100cm [30" x 40"]
  • 90cm X 120cm [36"x 48"]
  • 100cm 140cm [40" x 56"]
  • 100cm X 150cm [40" x 60"]
  • 120cm 160cm [48" x 64"]
  • 120cm X 180cm [48" x 70"]
  • 135cm X 200cm [54" x 79"]

Why buy from Us :

  • 100% handmade oil Painting by professional Artists.
  • Museum-Quality Painting Reproductions.
  • 1.5" white borders for stretching and frames if you buy rolled.
  • Handmade museum quality oil painting made to order, just for you.
  • Certificate of Authenticity that verifies hand painted fine art reproduction of famous painting.
  • Hand-painted and delivered  in 3 to 4 weeks.

Gustav Klimt’s Life as an artist

Gustav Klimt was born on 14th July 1862 in Baumgarten.  Klimt has shown his artistic talent from a young age, just like his other two brothers, so he attended the University of applied arts Vienna, formerly known as Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule. There he studied architectural painting from 1876 until 1883.

Thus, early in his career, Klimt worked as an interior designer creating murals for wealthy patrons. Along with his younger brother Ernst, and their friend Franz Matsch, he worked on many murals and gained numerous commissions. As a team, they also helped their teacher to paint murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

He began his career as a professional mural painter by working on the walls and ceilings in large public buildings on the Ringstrasse and creating a series of “Allegories and Emblems” that made his name well-known among the artists. The trio’s mural painting in the Burgtheater in Vienna earned them the Golden Order of Merit from the Austrian Emperor Josef I in 1888.

After the death of his father and brother, Ernst, a change in artistic vision took place in Klint that influenced him to develop an expression of his own personal style in his works. His artistic style mostly depicted symbolic figures expressing ‘naked truth’ that certainly denounced the policies of Austrian society, e.g., Ancient Greece and Egypt (1891), Pallas Athene (1898), and Nuda Veritas (1899).

In the early 20th Century, Klimt started his Golden Phase by producing paintings with the utilization of extensive gold leaf detailing and two-dimensional perspectives. This gained him the reputation as a member of the Secessionist movement and the pioneer of a European art genre, Symbolism. This genre shared its similarities with Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements that showed mystical motifs along with the encouragement of personal styles of naturalists, realists, and symbolists, unlike Vienna Secession.

At the end of the 19th Century, Klimt met an Austrian fashion designer Emilie Louise Floge, who was his companion till the end of his life. With the impression of them being lovers, Klimt has produced many great works. And one of them is ‘The Kiss,’ which he started in 1907 and completed in 1908.

This beautiful yet controversial art piece received much backlash and criticism due to the use of erotic Symbolism that he created for the University of Vienna auditorium ceiling. Despite so much negative reception, Klimt was also getting popular for using his personal approach to art.

Artistic Depiction of the ‘The Kiss’

Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss depicts the image of a young couple’s tenderness and passion being in each other’s embrace. This shimmering gold detailing and colorful art piece is a love scene of two bodies embracing each other, and as the title suggests, the couple is tangled in a passionate and engrossing kiss.

The painting shows a man and woman embracing each other. The man has bent down to kiss the woman’s cheek while cupping the woman’s face in his hand.  The woman is on her knees, keeping one arm around his neck and the other gently caressing the man’s hand. The Lovers are in the background of a flower field at the very edge while the woman’s feet are dangling off the edge.

This easily symbolizes the danger of losing oneself in their passion. The audience can only see the man’s face marginally as Klimt showed the top of his head for the most part while he is affectionately kissing the woman’s cheek. On the other hand, Klimt showed the woman’s face fully where he captured her emotions perfectly, i.e., a mixture of ecstasy and absolute compliance.

Just like many of Klimt’s works, The Kiss also conceals the man’s face and full focus on the woman’s face and facial expression. Even though the man’s position might show dominance and appear intrusive, his gentle hold over the woman’s face can ignite the feeling of tenderness and warmth effortlessly.

Being a son of a gold engraver, Klimt is very much familiar with using gold to his expertise. In The Kiss, Klimt used a powered gold coating that acts as a shimmering background while the couple is immersed in a passion-filled kiss. The embracing couple is hidden behind a large golden cloak, which can be depicted as an embellishment that protects the lovers and their immortal love.

The man’s cloak shows a repeating geometric pattern in golden, black, grey, and white colors, symbolizing the man’s strength, virility, and masculinity. On the woman’s part, Klimt used flowers and circles that portray and reflect the image of the woman’s femininity and maternity.

Artists might avoid painting on a square canvas since it would make the canvas’s subject appear too symmetrical. But Klimt showed his geniuses as a painter by making ‘The Kiss’ more dynamic despite being on a square canvas. Since the figures and the spaces are very vertical, not to mention the male’s head almost touches the margins, the audience might not even realize the painting being square.

After breaking away from Vienna Secession, Klimt presented ‘The Kiss’ in his The Kunstschau exhibition for the first time to the public. Klimt received fierce criticism from the public due to the display of an erotic scene, and it also affected him severely on a financial level. However, The Kiss has already gained national interest, which made the government of Viennese purchase it even before the exhibition is ended. This event is the commencement of the astronomical success ‘The Kiss’ gained.

Some unpopular facts about ‘The Kiss’

  • Klimt has painted the two figures in ‘The Kiss’ fully robed, leaving out only their heads and hands uncovered. However, in the early 1900s, post-victorian society deemed the art piece as pornographic.
  • The Kiss was sold to the Belvedere Museum of Vienna by the Austrian government even before Klimt has finished the canvas, despite facing aggressive public criticism. The purchase price was 25,000 crowns, which was five times higher than any painting purchase prior to ‘The Kiss’ in Vienna. Later it was revealed that it was just the bargain price.
  • The Kiss is an oversized painting with a size of approximately 6 x 6 ft.
  • ‘The Kiss’ has made Gustav Klimt so symbolic for Vienna that the Austrian Mint published a 14-gramed 100 Euro gold coin in 2003 that displays Klimt’s head on one side while the other side had the couple of ‘The Kiss’ engraved.
  • Despite ‘The Kiss’ being the most iconic work of Klimt that includes both sexes, the majority of his work involves and symbolizes females. Klimt’s other paintings that featured both Man and Woman are titled Beethoven Frieze (1901), Fulfillment (The Embrace) 1905, and Death and Life from (1910)

‘The Kiss’ used as a reference in various works

  • In 2012, the movie “This Means War” featured a scene where the characters are touring a private collection of Gustav Klimt, and the film made ‘The Kiss’ the focal point presenting Klimt’s style of work.
  • A web television series Altered Carbon also references ‘The Kiss’ in a scene where the protagonist is leaning against the wall of an apartment in the far future.
  • Elfen Lied, the 2004 anime program, also made numerous featuring of ‘The Kiss’and other painting of similar nature.
  • The fourth season of “The Freshman” also showcased many posters of ‘The Kiss’ that the vampires steal from dormitory students after killing them, illustrating the commonness of having ‘The Kiss’ as a dorm room poster.

Famous Art Works of Gustav Klimt

  1. Beethoven Frieze (1902)

Klimt painted Beethoven Frieze directly on the walls with light materials for the fourteenth Vienna Secessionist exhibition. The face in the Beethoven portrait resembles almost the face of an opera director and composer of the Vienna Court, Gustav Mahler.

  1. Nuda Veritas (1899)

This is a painting of a stark naked auburn-haired woman holding the mirror of truth. Klimt also put a famous quotation of Friedrich Schiller above her, “If you can’t please everyone with your deeds and your art, please only a few. To please many is bad.”

  1. Death and life (1908)

This painting of Klimt won the first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome in 1911. The painting is completed in 1915, three years prior to his death. Now it is preserved at the Leopold Museum in Vienna.

  1. The three ages of woman (1905)

Klimt painted this portrait expressing the three phases of woman as a child, young women, and old women in their nude state. The painting is housed in Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna.

  1. Danae (1907)

Danae is a popular oil painting of Klimt among many artists of the 1900s. The painting is symbolized as divine, love, and transcendence. It is one among many other Klimt’s private collections restored in Vienna.

  1. Hope II (1907-08)

This is the second painting of Klimt that focuses on a pregnant woman that depicts Herma, one of his favorite models. The painting is acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.  

Gustav Klimt passed away seven years after his famous painting ‘Death and Life’ won first prize in Rome’s world exhibitions of Arts on 6th February 1918. He was already suffering from pneumonia during the worldwide influenza epidemic in the respective year when he had a stroke to take him over to his demise. After his decease, many of his paintings were left uncompleted, which could have been some valuable additions to his masterpieces of Symbolism.

Get hand-painted museum-quality reproduction of Vase Of Sunflowers Painting By Van Gogh . The Reproduction will be hand-painted by one of our talented artists. Our canvas paintings are 100% hand-painted on canvas by professional artists.

Vase Of Sunflowers Painting By Van Gogh is hand-painted by our expert artists using the best quality Oils and materials to ensure the museum quality and life long durability of a true masterpiece. Don't settle for cheap prints when you can own a beautiful handmade oil painting reproduction by our professional Artists.

This Handmade Oil painting is made to order. Just for you, there might be some minor variations between the original paintings and our reproductions. Not all reproductions can be the same, but our artist uses best endeavors to replicate as closely as possible the original design.


      Frame Options:

    • Rolled : Rolled canvas painting is sent in a tube with 1.5" extra white canvas on all sides of painting, so you can also get it framed at a local shop.
    • Unframed/ stretched : Stretched and ready to Hang.
    • Floating Frame : Floating frame option available in six colors. ( Black, White,Wood, Light Gold, Antique Gold , Champange,)
    Additional Information
    Size

    40cm x 50cm [16" x 20"], 50cm X 60cm [20" x 24"], 60cm X 90cm [24" x 36"], 75cm X 100cm [30" x 40"], 90cm X 120cm [36" x 48"], 100cm x 140cm [40" x 56"], 100cm X 150cm [40" x 60"], 120cm x 160cm [48" x 64"], 120cm X 180cm [48" x 70"], 135cm X 200cm [54" x 79"]

    SELECT FINISH OR FRAME OPTION

    Streched, Rolled, Black Floating Frame, White Floating Frame, Wood Floating Frame, Light Gold Floating Frame, Antique Gold Floating Frame, Champagne Floating Frame