The Sotheby's auction for Gustav Klimt's final completed work sparked a 10-minute bidding war that far exceeded its initial $80 million price tag.
"Lady with a Fan" was found on the easel in Klimt's studio after his unexpected death at the onset of the influenza pandemic in February 1918Image: Wiktor Szymanowicz/AA/picture alliance
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The last portrait Austrian artist Gustav Klimt painted before he died was sold at auction on Tuesday, fetching over $108 million (€98.5 million), according to Sotheby's auction house.
Bidding on the masterpiece far exceeded Sotheby's price estimate of $80 million.
Kilmt's untimely death at the age of 55, brought on by the influenza pandemic of 1918, meant that several of his works remained unfinished. The last one he did manage to complete, however, has become a collector's item.
"Dame mit Fächer" ("Lady with a Fan"), a painting of an unnamed woman, was still on an easel in Klimt's studio when the artist succumbed to a stroke and pneumonia.
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Picasso and Monet pieces also for sale
The prized item went under the hammer at Sotheby's Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London on Tuesday. Other artworks for sale the same evening included pieces by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet, but both were dwarfed in price by Klimt's portrait.
Even before the hammer fell, the estimated price tag made the work "the most valuable ever to have been offered at auction in Europe," according to Sotheby's.
Other Klimt works have sold for more, however, including his 1907 painting, "Water Serpents II," which reportedly went for $170 million in 2015 in a private sale.
Gustav Klimt: Worth a Thousand Kisses
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"It shows Klimt at the very height of his creative prowess, drawing on imagery from Asia, of which he was obsessed," Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby's Europe and worldwide head of impressionist and modern art, told the news agency Reuters.
Newman highlighted depictions of a phoenix, lotus flower and other elements in the painting, adding: "It's very rare for a Klimt painting of this quality and caliber of a portrait of a woman to come to auction."
The Sotheby's website is no less effusive about Klimt and his work.
"Gustav Klimt’s beguiling representations of women have made him the most celebrated painter of the female portrait in the early twentieth century. Klimt’s women constitute the most important group of works in his oeuvre and are among the truly iconic images of Modern Art."
Last offered for sale in 1994, the painting is one of a small number of Klimt's portraits in private collections, according to Sotheby's.
The picture is exceeded its estimated price of $80 million, sparking a 10-minute bidding warImage: Wiktor Szymanowicz/AA/picture alliance
Controversy and University of Vienna fallout
Klimt's primary subject was the female body, however his portrayal of beauty and eroticism has not been without controversy. The paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized for being pornographic.
University officials took offence at the amount of naked skin on show in Klimt's works, leading him to eventually withdraw from the project entirely.
Klimt never accepted public contracts again, and insisted on only painting for private clients.
Gustav Klimt, a modernist master
Four years after Klimt’s long-lost masterwork, 'Portrait of a Lady,' resurfaced, another of the Austrian artist's most valuable works, "Lady with a Fan," is up for auction.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
The mystery of the 'Portrait of a Lady'
A painting that had vanished in 1997 was discovered in the walls of the very gallery it was stolen from in 2019. The painting's disappearance had been one of the art world's biggest mysteries. "Portrait of a Lady" is a later work by the Austrian art nouveau master.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/National Polizia di Stato
Lady with a Fan
The last piece Austrian artist Gustav Klimt ever painted — "Lady with a Fan" — was still on his easel at the time of his death at the onset of the flu pandemic in 1918. Sotheby's has described the portrait as "the most valuable ever to have been offered at auction in Europe."
Image: Wiktor Szymanowicz/AA/picture alliance
A master of detail
Fourteen-year-old Gustav Klimt entered the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts in 1876, and perfected the classical style of painting. He was a gifted draftsman able to depict details with photo-like precision. As a portraitist he captured the soul of the sitter.
Image: picture alliance/akg-images
Style of Vienna's Ringstrasse
Among his first commissions were the murals of Vienna's Burgtheater. In 1886, working as the group called the "Company of Artists," Gustav Klimt, his brother Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch painted emblematic scenes of theater history on the staircase hall and ceiling of the building. In 1888, Emperor Franz Joseph bestowed them with the Golden Cross of Merit.
Image: picture-alliance/IMAGNO/Wien Museum
'To every age its art. To every art its freedom'
In 1887 Klimt became the first president of the Vienna Secession movement. The group of artists — among them the renowned architect Joseph Hoffmann — aimed to create a new style that broke away from tradition and democratized art. The arts were to unite to bring beauty into everyday life.
Image: picture-alliance/akg-images
A break from the old
In 1894 Klimt was asked to paint three murals for the ceiling of the University of Vienna. Instead of painting historical allegories of medicine, philosophy and jurisprudence, the artist broke away from tradition and created dream-like scenes of sensuous nudes floating in a void. The painting above represents Medicine. All three works burned in the fire of Immendorf Castle in 1945.
His representation of Philosophy shows the victory of light over darkness. Klimt painted nude figures that pile up on the left edge of the canvas because of the lack of depth; a characteristic of modern art. They float through life and contort in despair with their eyes closed. Knowledge, at the bottom of the work, has her's wide open.
Klimt's famous golden period begins with the "Beethoven Frieze" and reaches its peek with "The Kiss" and "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (shown here). The latter is inspired by the Byzantine mosaic of Empress Theodora (A.D. 547) in the Church of San Vitale. Stolen by the Nazis in 1941, the painting was returned to the Bloch-Bauer heirs in 2006 and sold for a record sum that same year.
Image: picture-alliance/Heritage Images/Fine Art Images
The Kiss
Flatness creeps into modern art to emphasize the characteristics and materials of the medium. Art shows its truth instead of creating an optical illusion. By adding gold to his paintings, Klimt wrapped his figures around in an aura of spirituality. This period is characterized by a mixture of expressionism and rich ornamentation.
Image: picture-alliance/Heritage Images/Fine Art Images
The art of the line
Klimt studied the human form through hundreds of sketches. He drew mostly women of different shapes, and ages in multiple poses. His sensuous lines dig into the soul of the model, and have a similar effect to literature's stream of consciousness. Through form stripped to its bare minimum, Klimt opens a window into the human psyche.
Image: picture-alliance/Heritage Images/Fine Art Images
The inner world
Even though the subject of life and death has been depicted many times throughout history, Klimt managed to make it modern. In "Death and Life," death looks menacingly towards the stream of the living who float in a dream of color. As many artists of his time, Klimt has a particular interest in the inner world.
Image: picture alliance/IMAGNO/Leopold Museum Vienna
