Gustav Klimt Quotes

Famous Gustav Klimt quotes from across his lifetime, covering his life and work

Youth and age, blossoming and withering, the entire calamity of desire and suffering known as human life. And the symbolic group intimately surrounded and enveloped by the most equisite fantasy of mosaic shoots.

— Ludwig Hevesi, 1907 on Three Ages of Woman

Perhaps you can teach me something.

— when Egon Schiele, at age 17, asks if he might take him as a student

On my first days here I did not start work immediately but, as planned, I took it easy for a few days - flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little.

After tea it's back to painting - a large poplar at dusk with a gathering storm.

I can paint and draw. I believe this myself and a few other people say that they believe this too. But I'm not certain of whether it's true.

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I'm a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.

Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

True relaxation, which would do me the world of good, does not exist for me.

Although even when I am being idle I have plenty of food for thought both early and late – thoughts both about and not about art.

His erotic nature - surrender to the material and at the same time its mastery - makes Klimt a prophet of female beauty. Thousands of drawings speak of how deeply he was immersed in this cult... The drawings establish his most incontestable claim to the title of mastership; their suppleness quivering with feeling is unparalleled in the whole of art today.

— Hans Tietze, 1918 on Klimt's drawings

The Stocklet Frieze: an artificial garden at the heart of the house

— Anette Freytag on Stoclet Frieze

An artist only rarely has the opportunity to execute a work of art in which his imagination takes wing, his ideas become reality and his artistry is able to fully unfold. ...Amongst these houses, the Palais Stoclet gleams like a precious jewel of exquisite beauty amongst stones of lesser value.

— A.S. Levetus, 1914 on Stoclet Frieze