‘Klimt and the Secession’ at Palazzo Braschi in Rome with works also from Vienna

The exhibition on ‘Klimt, secession and Italy’ opens tomorrow at Palazzo Braschi in Rome – one of the most anticipated for the value and number of works on display, over two hundred, fifty of which signed by the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, reproduced also in the voluminous catalog published by Skira – promoted by the Capitoline Superintendence for Cultural Heritage and produced by Arthemisia with Zetema, in collaboration with the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and in cooperation with the Klimt Foundation, 110 years after the award that the Viennese artist received. in Rome in 1911 on the occasion of the International Art Exhibition. The exhibition, divided into 14 sections, presents some of the most famous works painted by Klimt, such as ‘Judith’, ‘Lady in white’, ‘Friends’, ‘The bride’, as well as the ‘Portrait of a lady’ also famous for the mysterious theft suffered in 1997 from the ‘Ricci Oddi’ Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza and the subsequent accidental discovery in the garden inside the museum after more than twenty years. Obviously missing is ‘The kiss’, perhaps Klimt’s most iconic work jealously guarded at the Belvedere in Vienna. Framing Gustav Klimt’s paintings are several works illustrating the artistic period of the Viennese Secession, by artists such as Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, Carl Moll, Franz von Matsch.Several paintings also document Klimt’s travels and his relationship with Italy, with canvases dedicated to the Bel Paese such as Lake Garda where he spent a summer. Also exhibited are the photographic images digitally reconstructed by Google Arts & Cuture of three allegorical paintings known as the ‘Quadri delle Faculty’, or ‘Medicine’, ‘Jurisprudence’, ‘Philosophy’, which were created for the ceiling of the Aula Magna of the University of Vienna but then rejected because considered scandalous and lost in a fire in 1945 at the Austrian castle of Immendorf. 14 sections are dedicated in succession to Vienna in 1900, to the first works of Klimt, to the foundation of the Viennese Secession, to the contextual design , to Klimt’s travels in Italy, to the work ‘Giuditta’ – also taken up in the exhibition poster, which will remain open at Palazzo Braschi in Rome until 27 March next year – to the ‘Portrait of a lady’, to the ‘Quadri delle Faculty ‘, to the’ Beethoven Frieze ‘mural 34 meters long by two in height, to landscape painting, to the 1911 International Fine Arts Exhibition in Rome, to the Venice Biennale, to the Roman Secession, to’ La bride ‘. “At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for Austrian artists, Italian art was at the same time an essential aspect of training and a burden that slowed down the path towards modernity – explains the Capitoline superintendent of cultural heritage Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli – The protest of the ‘Viennese Secession’ founded in 1897 with the motto ‘His art at all times, his freedom to art’, marked the abandonment of Italian models but not for this reason Klimt ceased to be interested in ‘Italy “, as shown by his travels to Venice, Ravenna and Lake Garda as well as to Rome” which saw him as the undisputed protagonist of the Austrian pavilion for the Universal Art Exhibition “. On his side, the director of the Belvedere Museum of Vienna, Stella Rolling, which houses the world’s largest collection of Gustav Klimt’s paintings, underlines “the task of sharing this authentic treasure with the public from all over the world” and in the case of the exhibition hosted at Palazzo Braschi, “testifying to the bond that Klimt forged with Italy and in particular with Rome, during his life”. (By Enzo Bonaiuto)