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Art in Vienna: Gustav Klimt worked in three studios : From 1883 to 1892 in Vienna's 4th district, 1892 to 1912 in Vienna's 8th district and finally 1912 to 1918 in Vienna's 13th district. When in Vienna take the U4 subway direction Huetteldorf to the Hietzing station and catch the 58 tram in the round-about on top toward Unter St.Veit and ride it until the Feldmuehlgasse stop (right next to a Chinese restaurant, one stop before the end station). Feldmuehlgasse 15a is a large garden and a villa plus some miscellaneous modern studios surrounded by mostly apartment buildings. Access is limited so check the website http://www.klimt.at for business hours. Admission is free, donations are welcome.
However, the city fathers do not deem it necessary to save Klimt's studio and so it fell to a group of concerned citizens to preserve the compound from the auction block and from further decay. The Gustav Klimt Memorial Society (office@klimt.at) is trying to preserve this place as a cultural treasure and a place for cultural activities open to the public. The garden was, and is to a degree still lovely. It isn't much of a museum with its volunteers and cheap facsimile displays. There are lots of written information and a few bits and pieces of what is left of Klimt's tools and props. Old photographs on the wall speak of a happier time about the place. Egon Schiele is quoted to have said in 1918: "His friends should buy the house in Hiezing including the garden and the furniture. Nothing should be removed as everything connected with the Klimt house is a whole, a work of art that must not be destroyed. The unfinished pictures, paint brushes and, worktables and the palette should remain untouched and accessible in the form of a Klimt museum to the few who love and delight in art". Schiele was soon to follow his great patron. Perhaps the city of Vienna could branch off some of the profits that were made and are still being made from paintings stolen during the Nazi era; at least the portion that can not be returned, and use some of it towards the common good at the Klimt villa. Art2u Artists & Art History: Gustav Klimt Biography
About Herb Ranharter:
© 2002, @delARTe. LLC
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Comments? published August 22, 2002 |
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The studio has been built up one flight since its use by the master and is currently all together in a bad state; an embarrassment to the city of Vienna that cashes in on a Klimt bonanza of biblical
proportions. Klimt's work has become the base for an industry about town as lucrative as the Mozart-based activities all over the region. One can hardly go anywhere near the city core without drowning in Mozart, Beethoven, Schiele or Klimt. From the Beer mugs through the T-shirts through the umbrellas it's M, B, S, & K; they have become brand names and serve to cover all. It is as if no art has been produced since the Secession days.