Lot 8 : Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Gustav Klimt - 1862-1918

Auction Location: United Kingdom - 2001
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Description:

Liegender Akt nach rechts signed 'Gustav Klimt' (lower right) pencil on paper 14 5/8 x 22in. (37 x 55.8cm.) Executed circa 1910 PROVENANCE Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner and thence by descent. LITERATURE A. Strobl, Gustav Klimt. Die Zeichnungen, Vol. IV, Salzburg, 1989, no. 3627 (illustrated p. 169). NOTES In her catalogue raisonn‚ of Klimt's drawings, Alice Strobl lists the present work as a preparatory study relating to the artist's celebrated Tod und Leben of 1908-11 (N. and D. no. 183; fig. 1). The relationship between the drawings made in preparation for this painting and the canvas is more metaphorical than most for which we have records. Indeed, the various drawings include formal portrait studies, both full length and carefully worked drawings of heads, while there are other several nude drawings (A. S. nos. 1852-1863), of which the present work could be seen as the culmination. Liegender Akt nach rechts is the most completely worked and the most dynamic in its handling of the horizontal sheet. Klimt's visual trope, which directs and reveals the site of arousal for the viewer in his erotic drawings, operates clearly here. All attention is focused on the centre of the drawing, otherwise seen as the centre of the woman's body, and the centre of the artist's private sexual obsession. Like the sketch, Lesende oder Singende von vorne (see Lot 3), the solecism of the moment captured is emphasized by the woman's withheld gaze. One writer on the women in Klimt's erotic drawings has observed, "The pencil line with which they are described explores and caresses as though the act of drawing was itself part of the process of foreplay and intercourse. The women in these drawings have no identity as individuals. They are anonymous and largely passive. They exist only to wet the appetite of the male spectator who is not only a potential lover but also a voyeur" (Whitford, Klimt, London, 1998, pp. 161-162).