Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
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| Adele Bloch-Bauer I. |
|---|
| Gustav Klimt , 1907 |
| Oil, silver and gold on canvas |
| 138 × 138 cm |
| New Gallery (New York) |
The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I , also known as the “Golden Adele”, is a painting by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918). It is considered to be one of the most important works by Klimt and of Austrian Art Nouveau ( Vienna Secession ) as a whole. In the course of media coverage of the return of the painting to the heirs by the Republic of Austria, it was sometimes referred to as an “icon” of the country's cultural identity.
In 2006 it was at a rumored record price of 135 million dollars (106.7 million euros) - the highest price ever paid for a painting to date - by the American entrepreneur Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan ( New York ) acquired.
description
Adele Bloch-Bauer I is an oil painting with extensive silver leaf and gold leaf on canvas in the format 138 × 138 centimeters.
The overall impression of the picture is dominated by the face and hands in the upper right quarter, which, realistically depicted, stand out against the ornamentally flowing gold tone of the rest of the picture and attract the viewer's gaze.
The image composition is clearly divided into two halves vertically: the right half shows Adele Bloch-Bauer, the left half, on the other hand, is almost empty, shows a merely hinted interior, in which in the lower third of the image the wide hem of the dress or coat is The portrayed. Gustav Klimt largely dispensed with the suggestion of a spatial effect, so that the painting appears flat overall. The sketched space takes a back seat to the ornamental quality of the golden background, in which the living room, armchair and dress are placed next to each other.
The slim figure appears to be standing upright, but on closer inspection it sits or leans on an upholstered armchair and occupies the entire vertical of the picture, the head seems to be cut off at the top of the picture. The dark, pinned-on hair and the disproportionately large red mouth emphasize the contrasting extremely pale, white-bluish skin, which is released through the tight-fitting pinafore on the cleavage and arms. Adele Bloch-Bauer holds her hands loosely interlocked in front of her chest and looks directly at the viewer.
A wide shawl or cloak spreads around the tight dress, extending from the arms to the edges of the picture.
The dress, coat, armchair and background are predominantly covered with gold. The tight dress shows at the top a narrow bar of partly linear rectangles and a wider section with a double row of tall, slender triangles. This is followed by a pattern of transversely arranged stylized eyes, which are surrounded by large flat triangles, which are reminiscent of an all-seeing eye . Overall, the dress looks a bit darker than the surrounding coat with its interspersed ornaments of spirals and leaf-like symbols and implied folds. The armchair, which is also gold, can only be distinguished from the picture ground by its surface designed with a spiral pattern; shadows or contours are either completely absent or only indicated sparingly.
Two large square surfaces, possibly pillows, can be seen behind the torso and head, which allow the light face to stand out from the dark tones and the small-scale ornaments.
The left half of the picture could represent the wall of an interior. It is marbled in gold over the entire area, the lower quarter is green and set off from the gold surface with a black and white border with a checkerboard pattern. The green area could be an implied paneling or wall painting, but also a floor attached to a chair rail.
motive
The painting shows Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925), daughter of the general director of the Wiener Bankverein , Moritz Bauer, at the age of about 26 years. In 1899, at the age of 18, Adele Bauer married the much older Ferdinand Bloch (1864–1945). Her sister Maria Therese Bauer, known as “Thedy”, Gustav Bloch, had already taken Ferdinand's brother as husband. Both families took on the name Bloch-Bauer.
They belonged to the culturally open-minded Jewish upper middle class in Vienna during the fin de siècle period . Ferdinand Bloch himself had successfully turned his father's sugar factory into a Europe-wide company. Artists, writers and social democratic politicians such as Karl Renner , who later became the first state chancellor of the First Republic, and Julius Tandler met in Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's salon .
Maria Altmann (1916–2011), niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer and co-heir of the picture, described her aunt as: “Suffering, always with a headache, smoking like a chimney, terribly tender and dark. A thoroughly spiritual face, smug, elegant. "
Among the artists who were supported by the couple was Gustav Klimt, who had been friends with Adele Bloch-Bauer since 1899. In 1901 he completed the portrait of Judith I , a half-act based on the biblical figure Judith , in which Adele Bloch-Bauer served as a model without this being known. In 1909 Judith II was created and this picture very likely depicts Adele Bloch-Bauer.
Judith I (1901)
Judith II (1909)
Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912)
In addition to the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I , Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer bought another portrait of his wife, Adele Bloch-Bauer II (1912), as well as four landscape paintings by the painter: Birkenwald (1903), Schloss Kammer am Attersee III (1910), apple tree I. (around 1912) and houses in Unterach (around 1916). The portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (1917/1918) was also acquired by Bloch-Bauer.
Origin of the picture
In 1903, Gustav Klimt received the order from Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer to make a portrait of his wife. In the following years, he created more than 100 drawings and studies for the painting until it in 1907 as Adele Bloch-Bauer I was able to present. The following four sketches were all from 1903 and were made with black chalk:
- Four sketches
It can be seen that the basic construction of the picture was already fixed at this early point in time; the only disputed issue was obviously the exact position of the seated model, especially the position of the hands and head.
Technology and style
(note the gold border around the head)
The portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer comes from Klimt's "golden phase". In 1903, during a trip to Italy in Ravenna and Venice, he saw the church mosaics, which were often decorated with gold, and subsequently, inspired by these images of saints and rulers, began to translate this imagery into a contemporary form. He experimented with various techniques to redesign the surfaces of his works. In addition to oil painting , he used pastiglia , a type of relief technique, and gilding .
Only the face, shoulders, arms and hands are painted naturalistically. The background as well as the dress and the armchair, some of which are recognizable in its sweep, are only partially indicated, merging into ornaments and abstract surfaces that do not allow a clear spatial orientation and are characteristic of Klimt's handling of surfaces, colors and shapes since around 1898–1900 . In addition to Byzantine art , he was also inspired by Minoan , Mycenaean , Egyptian and medieval religious painting in Italy. In addition, his formal language shows the influences of the Japanese printing art Ukiyo-e , which was fashionable in Europe at the time, and the painting of the Edo period (see Japonism ). Last but not least, characteristics of French Impressionism can be recognized, which had been made known in Vienna by the artist group “ Wiener Secession ”, which Klimt also belonged to until 1905.
Other well-known works of this time are Wasserschlange (1904–1907), the Stoclet Frieze (1904–1910), a commission for a Belgian industrialist in Brussels, The Three Ages of Woman (1905) and The Kiss (1907–1908), which with the "Golden Adele" is considered the highlight of Klimt's golden phase. During these years women were the central main motif in Klimt's oeuvre.
- Other pictures from Klimt's "Golden Period"
Water snakes I (1904–1907)
The expectation (Stoclet-Fries, 1904–1910)
The Three Ages of Woman (1905)
Danaë (1907)
History of the picture and provenance
The picture Adele Bloch-Bauer I was exhibited in the artist's studio in Vienna immediately after completion in 1907 and appeared for the first time in the same year with a picture in the magazine German Art and Decoration . In the same year it was also on display at the International Art Exhibition in Mannheim , and a year later it was in the Kunstschau Wien in 1908 . In 1910 it was part of the exhibition in the Klimt Hall of IX. Esposizione Internazionale di Venezia . The picture was not shown at any other exhibition until 1918 and hung in Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer's apartment in Vienna 4th, Schwindgasse 10 (a side street on Prinz-Eugen-Strasse near Schwarzenbergplatz ), then it was presented at the Kunsthaus Zürich . From 1918 to 1921 it hung on loan from the Austrian State Gallery in the Belvedere .
When Adele Bloch-Bauer died on January 24th, 1925, she left in her will the wish that her husband would bequeath the Klimt pictures in his possession to the Austrian Gallery: “My 2 portraits and 4 landscapes by Gustav Klimt, please after his death my spouses of the Austrian State Gallery in Vienna, the Viennese and Jungfer.Brezaner Library, the Wiener Volks u. Leaving Workers Library ”. In the probate proceeding , he stated that the pictures were his property, but agreed to grant her request. He donated one of the landscape paintings ( Schloss Kammer am Attersee III) to the Austrian Gallery in Belvedere Palace in 1936 . Adele Bloch-Bauer I was presented in 1937 in Paris at the Exposition d'Art Autrichien and in Bern .
Aryanization
When Austria on 12./13. In March 1938 when the " Anschluss " became part of the German Reich under the dictatorship of the National Socialists , Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer fled first to Czechoslovakia and then to Switzerland. The paintings, like most of his other possessions, remained in Austria. His estate in Czechoslovakia, Jungfern Breschan , was inhabited by Reinhard Heydrich after the country was annexed . Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer died on November 13, 1945 in Zurich without having returned to Vienna beforehand. Before that, he had revoked all testamentary provisions relating to donations to Austrian museums.
Bloch-Bauer's assets and the art collection were expropriated by the National Socialists, like those of the other Jewish citizens who had fled, on the basis of a tax procedure initiated by the Wieden tax office in Vienna on April 24, 1938 . Shares in his sugar factory, which he had deposited in trust in a bank for security in Switzerland, were sold to the German investor Clemens Auer, far below their value.
In accordance with the laws of the German Reich, the lawyer Erich Fuehrer, who was appointed by the state as a temporary administrator, was in charge of the fixed and movable property remaining in Austria . He sold the entire property, the palace, the factory, the porcelain collection comprising around 400 exhibits, paintings from the 19th century and tapestries. Initially, he was unable to sell Klimt's pictures, including Adele Bloch-Bauer I , as the works did not meet the taste of the National Socialist art officials. 1941 Finally, the Austrian Gallery in the Belvedere bought, then called "Modern Gallery", the Klimt paintings Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Apple Tree I .
Return requests
The Bloch-Bauer couple had no children. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer appointed the children of his brother and sister-in-law, Maria Altmann , Luise Gutmann and Robert Bentley, as heirs . Shortly before his death, after the end of the war in 1945, Bloch-Bauer commissioned the Viennese lawyer Gustav Rinesch (1905–1985) to campaign for the return of his property stolen by the National Socialists. Rinesch followed this mandate as the legal representative of the heirs even after Bloch-Bauer's death. However, these received only parts of their inheritance. To "Aryanised" Due to the usual in Austria postwar approach, the issuing of export licenses when returning goods to the "gift" of parts of these assets to the Republic junktimieren , the country maintained a the Klimt paintings. They remained in the Austrian Gallery as showpieces of the collection.
In 1998 Austria passed the federal law on the return of works of art , which also included the right for every interested citizen to inspect the documents of the state museums and galleries, which provided information on how works of art had been acquired. The journalist Hubertus Czernin , who also looked through these archives during his research, informed the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer about the circumstances in which the Klimt pictures came into the possession of the Republic after the war (the purchase in 1941 was not legally valid). The right of inspection used by Czernin became ineffective again after a few weeks due to a ministerial instruction.
Maria Altmann , who had lived in the USA since fleeing the National Socialists, applied for the return of her inheritance, which the responsible minister Elisabeth Gehrer refused; she asked the heirs to enforce their rights. She took the view that, in accordance with Adele Bloch-Bauer's last will, the picture had legally passed into the possession of the Austrian Gallery.
In 2005, after Maria Altmann brought a lawsuit against the Republic of Austria in the USA (also on behalf of the descendants of her siblings living in Canada), an arbitration tribunal (Andreas Nödl, Walter H. Rechberger, Peter Rummel ) was convened. In its decision of January 15, 2006, it stated that “the requirements of the Federal Law on the Return of Works of Art from the Austrian Federal Museums and Galleries of December 14, 1998, Federal Law Gazette I No. 181/1998, for a free return of the [ …] Images of the heirs are fulfilled. ”The surprising turnaround in Austria's stance had a political background and was initiated by the President of the National Council, Andreas Khol, in talks with the US Deputy Finance Minister Stuart E. Eizenstat in May 2005. The Republic of Austria wanted to pay out 210 million euros to victims of National Socialism all over the world in order to receive a guarantee that no further claims would be made. The aim was to prevent targeted class actions in the USA against the Republic of Austria. The basis for the desired legal peace was the Washington Agreement for Compensation and Restitution , signed on June 6, 2001. In mid-November 2005, a New York court rejected the last class action, and on December 8, 2005, Federal Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel visited US President George W. Bush and received the desired assurance in exchange for the restitution of the five Klimt paintings.
After the Republic of Austria had granted the right of first refusal, the five paintings ( Adele Bloch-Bauer I , Adele Bloch-Bauer II , Apfelbaum I , Buchenwald / Birkenwald and houses in Unterach am Attersee ) with an estimated value of 300 million dollars (approx. 250 million euros), the pictures were taken to Los Angeles on February 14, 2006 , where Maria Altmann had lived since 1942 after fleeing via the Netherlands and England. There they were first shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art .
new York
On June 19, 2006, newspapers reported that the entrepreneur Ronald S. Lauder is said to have acquired the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer for allegedly 135 million US dollars (106.7 million euros) as part of a private sale or silent trade. It would be the highest known price paid for a painting until then. There is no official confirmation of the award from Lauder or Maria Altmann's lawyer. The latter only confirmed that the price was well above that of the most expensive painting to date, Pablo Picasso's Garçon à la pipe (2004: US $ 104.1 million). As early as November 2006, the proceeds from the sale of painting No. 5, 1948 by Jackson Pollock beat this short-term record. In the following 15 years the prices for Klimt paintings continued to rise. For example, the painting Water Snakes II , with the subtitle Die Freundinnen , is said to have been purchased by the Russian oligarch Dmitri Rybolowlew for 170 million US dollars in 2013 and the painting Adele Bloch-Bauer II in 2017 by a Chinese billionaire for 150 million US dollars.
The picture Adele Bloch-Bauer I has been exhibited since July 12, 2006 in the Neue Galerie in New York City , which Lauder co-founded in 2001 and whose collection focuses on Austrian and German art around 1900. The private museum is located in Manhattan on Museum Mile on the Upper East Side and is open to the public. From September 2016 to January 2017, the special exhibition Klimt and the women from Vienna's Golden Age 1900–1918 , curated by Tobias G. Natter , was shown. After more than ten years, the two large Adele portraits were reunited in the same room, as the 1912 painting Adele Bloch-Bauer II from 1912 was on loan at his last stop in New York .
reception
Movie
In 2006 the documentary Die Affäre Klimt by Jane Chablani was released, in which contemporary witnesses such as Maria Altmann , Hubertus Czernin , Tina Walzer , Jonathan Petropolous, Willy Korte and Randy Schoenberg have their say and the history of the restitution is traced.
In 2015, Die Frau in Gold , a feature film-like, greatly simplified and sometimes distorted representation of Maria Altmann's legal dispute against Austria over this and four other Klimt paintings, was shown in cinemas. Maria Altmann was played by Helen Mirren in this film .
literature
- Valérie Trierweiler , former companion of the then French President François Hollande , wrote the novel Le secret d'Adèle , published in 2017, or Die Dame in Gold , translated into German by Eliane Hagedorn and Barbara Reitz, published in 2018. The author “now tells, how the bourgeois luxury creature "Adele Bloch-Bauer" married to a very wealthy entrepreneur "succumbs to the bourgeois sex maniac Klimt and frees himself from him again."
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Portrait: Adele Bloch-Bauer. The bitter picture controversy in retrospect and: Who was the beautiful lady? In: Die Presse , January 20, 2006 (archived website).
- ↑ Partsch 2000, pp. 73, 84.
- ↑ Nebehay 1992, p. 221 f.
- ^ German art and decoration , 20.1907, p. 331 f.
- ↑ Award of January 15, 2006 (PDF) ( Memento of February 14, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ How won, so gone? Klimt's Adele I and II can only be seen briefly in the Neue Galerie New York. Wiener Zeitung , December 11, 2017.
- ^ Gustav Klimt - five paintings from the collection of Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Los Angeles County Museum of Art website
- ↑ Lauder Pays $ 135 million, a Record, for a Klimt Portrait. New York Times , June 19, 2006
- ↑ Jackson Pollock work, the most expensive picture in the world . In: " Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ", November 2, 2006
- ↑ David Geffen Sells Jackson Pollock for $ 140 million. In: New York Times, November 2, 2006.
- ↑ How won, so gone? Wiener Zeitung, December 11, 2017.
- ^ Klimt painting sold for $ 150 million. Die Presse , (Vienna) February 9, 2017.
- ^ Art in Words : Gustav Klimt: Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Adele Bloch-Bauer II. January 6, 2017.
- ↑ Woman in Gold IMDb
- ↑ Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2018.
- ↑ Ursula März: Is that kitsch? A French woman forges a heated love affair with Klimt. In: Die Zeit , Hamburg, No. 46, November 8, 2018, p. 54.
literature
- Fritz Novotny, Johannes Dobai: Gustav Klimt. Residenz Verlag, Salzburg 1967.
- Christian M. Nebehay: Gustav Klimt - From the drawing to the picture. Edition Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85447-369-9 .
- Hubertus Czernin : The forgery. The Bloch-Bauer case. Volume 1: The Bloch-Bauer Case and the Work of Gustav Klimt. Volume 2. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-7076-0000-9 (= library of robbery, volume III).
- Susanna Partsch: Gustav Klimt - painter of women. Prestel Verlag, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-7913-3243-0 .
- Rudolf Welser, Christian Rabl: The Klimt case. The legal problem of the Klimt pictures in the Belvedere. Manz, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-214-00332-1 .
- Christiane Koch: Gustav Klimt. Prestel Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7913-3289-9 .
- Gottfried Fliedl: Klimt. Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-8228-5013-6 .
Web links
- Neue Galerie New YorkMuseum for german and austrian art
- The Bloch-Bauer case: documents on the legal dispute and numerous additional information (partly in English) ( Memento of August 30, 2000 in the Internet Archive )
- "New Klimt in Town: The Face That Set the Market Buzzing" , New York Times , July 14, 2006 - with picture gallery
- The affair Klimt in the Internet Movie Database (English)
