M_DU_022 BIRCH FOREST _ LITZLBERG / KÜRBLA _ GUSTAV KLIMT 1903 / ENDEL LEPP 2020
Text courtesy of Christie's
“I get up early in the morning, usually around 6 am, sometimes earlier sometimes later. If I get up and the weather is fine I go into the nearby forest. I am painting a small beech grove, mixed with a few conifers,” so Gustav Klimt described life in the picturesque village of Litzlberg, situated on Lake Attersee in Austria, in the summer of 1903 (Letter to M. Zimmerman, August 1903, quoted in S. Koja, ed., Gustav Klimt: Landscapes, Munich, 2006, p. 27).
Filled with the stillness, mystery and timelessness that characterizes the greatest of Klimt’s landscapes, Birch Forest was painted during this idyllic summer retreat.
Here, Klimt has pictured a segment of a densely wooded birch forest with exquisite, meticulously rendered detail. The elegant, otherworldly silver trunks ascend, “like columns in a cathedral created by nature,” Johannes Dobai described, from a dappled bronze carpet of fallen leaves (Gustav Klimt Landscapes, London, 1988, p. 17).
A multitude of hues, gold, russet, and sage make up this mosaic-like accumulation of strokes, a contrast to the deep green foliage that lines the top of the closely cropped canvas. With his distinctive artistic technique, including his newly adapted pointillist-style brushstrokes, Klimt transformed this quiet corner of a woods into a shimmering vision of subtle color, pattern and light. Kuva vähem
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