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''Death and Life'' (German: ''Tod und Leben'', Italian: ''Morte e Vita'') is an oil on canvas painting by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. The painting was started in 1908 and completed in 1915. It is created in an Art Nouveau (Modern) style by use of allegorical painting genre during Golden phase. The painting measures 178 by 198 centimeters and is now housed at the
In 1911 ''Death and Life'' received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. In 1912 Klimt exhibited the painting at an art exhibition in
On 15 November 2022 members of climate protest group Letzte Generation Österreich (Last Generation Austria) threw a black oily liquid onto the painting's protective glass, protesting "oil and gas drilling ... a death sentence to society"; one glued themself to the glass. The painting underneath remained undamaged.
Analysis of Gustav Klimt's ''Death and Life''
{{Gustav Klimt 1915 paintings Paintings by Gustav Klimt category:20th-century allegorical paintings category:Allegorical paintings by Austrian artists Paintings in the collection of the Leopold Museum Paintings about death Paintings of children Paintings of people Oil on canvas paintings Skulls in art
Leopold Museum
The Leopold Museum, housed in the Museumsquartier in Vienna, Austria, is home to one of the largest collections of modern Austrian art, featuring artists such as Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl.
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in Vienna
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History
In 1911 ''Death and Life'' received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. In 1912 Klimt exhibited the painting at an art exhibition in Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
.
Further exhibitions of the painting took place e.g. 1913 in Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
and Mannheim
Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's ...
, 1914 in Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
, 1916 in Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
, 1917 in Stockholm, 1917 / 1918 in Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
, 1918 in Zurich and from 1923 several times in Vienna
en, Viennese
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, 1958 in Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
and 1965 in New York and London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
.
Klimt made changes to the painting in 1915, after the first five exhibitions of the painting. He changed the background from gold-colored to grey and added some mosaics.
Description
This is one of Klimt's central themes, central also to his time and to his contemporaries among them Edvard Munch and Egon Schiele. Klimt makes of it a modern dance of death, but unlike Schiele, he introduces a note of hope and reconciliation, instead of feeling threatened by the figure of death, his human beings seem to disregard it. The imagination of the artist is focused no longer on physical union, but rather on the expectation that precedes it. Perhaps this new found serenity is rooted in Klimt's own awareness of aging and closeness to death. But before the moment came when he chose to depict nothing more than moments of intense pleasure or miraculous beauty and youth.Climate protest
On 15 November 2022 members of climate protest group Letzte Generation Österreich (Last Generation Austria) threw a black oily liquid onto the painting's protective glass, protesting "oil and gas drilling ... a death sentence to society"; one glued themself to the glass. The painting underneath remained undamaged.
References
External links
Analysis of Gustav Klimt's ''Death and Life''
{{Gustav Klimt 1915 paintings Paintings by Gustav Klimt category:20th-century allegorical paintings category:Allegorical paintings by Austrian artists Paintings in the collection of the Leopold Museum Paintings about death Paintings of children Paintings of people Oil on canvas paintings Skulls in art