Life

Gustav Klimt was born on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, on July 14, 1862. His father, Ernst, was a struggling gold engraver who had immigrated to Vienna from Bohemia, and his mother, Anna, was musically talented. At 14 years old he left his normal school to attend the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts on a full scholarship. In 1897 Klimt and a group of artists founded an organization known as the Vienna Secession. In 1900, Philosophy, one of the three murals Klimt was developing for the University of Vienna, was exhibited for the first time, at the seventh Vienna Secession exhibition.

In 1905 the Vienna Secession split into two groups, one of which formed around Klimt. That same year, he received a commission for the dining room ceiling of the Palais Stoclet, the Brussels home of a wealthy Belgian industrialist. The work was completed in 1910, and the following year his painting "Death and Life" received first prize at an international exhibition in Rome. In January 1918, Gustav Klimt suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. He was hospitalized, and then contracted pneumonia at the hospital, of which he died on February 6, 1918. He is buried at the Hietzing cemetery in Vienna.