Gustiv Klimt (1862 - 1918)

Life and Death (1908) oil on canvas

This painting might considered his masterpiece.  Very Symbolist in form, technique and subject matter: Death leering at Life.  Death is wide awake, and Life, with its intertwining figures of babies, nurturing mothers, men, are all asleep.

A mosaic of colors, the two images are clearly delineated.  There is a troubled feeling pervasive in his art work in most (or all ) of his pieces.  The reoccurring themes of decadence, Death always nearby, and woman of brutal sexuality - in this work of art, women lovingly embracing a baby; what the critics would call the out come of a woman's insatiable need for sex.

The background is a lurid painted green, and Death looks to Life with black crosses all over his form.  A form like a spectra.  He would be like today's Goth movement, and in a split second he can ruin everything.

But Life is merged together like a fond family in bright mosaic colors of greens, yellows, blues, reds.   It's an image like a crazy quilt and flatness but does not recognize the figure of Doom nearby, but sleeps to live life blissfully.

Klimt, and Austrian painter, was not beloved in his time.  He often showed explicit sex themes, skull themes, pregnant woman, lesbianism, masturbation (yet it was all very organized).  He underscored the decadent theme of Symbolism without apology.