+ Expand

Description: Zwei Freundinnen signed 'Gustav Klimt' (lower left) pencil on paper 221/2 x 143/4in. (57 x 37.5cm.) Executed in 1916-17 PROVENANCE Acquired by the grandfather of the present owner and thence by descent. LITERATURE A. Strobl, Gustav Klimt. Die Zeichnungen, Vol. III, Salzburg, 1984, no. 2815a (illustrated p. 173). NOTES Drawn between 1916 and 1917, the present work is part of a series of studies executed for Klimt's painting Die Freundinnen (N. and D. no. 201; fig.1) of the same date. The oil belonged to the Lederer family, Klimt's most important patrons, and was destroyed in a fire in 1945, after being seized by the Nazis. "For Klimt", writes Mattenklott, "the bodies of the embracing girls may have combined to form that world which womanhood represented for him - an erotic world that was not impeded by forbidden pleasures or perversions" (quoted in G. Friedl, Gustav Klimt 1862-1918, The World in Female Form, Cologne, 1998, p. 192).