Gilded paintings detailed by intricate mosaics and an underlying eroticism gave Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918) critical success. Klimt's paintings have brought some of the highest prices recorded for individual works of art. This Austrian Symbolist painter was a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement, which strove to provide art exhibitions for unconventional young artists in the late 1890s and early 1900s. He became an icon of the Art Nouveau movement and his primary subject was the female form. Klimt utilized mythology and allegory to thinly disguise his highly erotic nature.
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