The Annual Conference of the Austrian Studies Association 2013 has the pleasure to host the exhibition

The Life and Art of Gustav Klimt - Forerunner to Modernism

presented by the Austrian Cultural Forum Ottawa.

To commemorate the official “Gustav Klimt Year” in Austria and his 150th birthday, the Austrian Cultural Forum in cooperation with the University of Waterloo is pleased to present a facsimile exhibit of his life and work.

Gustav Klimt was one of the central figures of fin-de-siècle Vienna, the epoch that marked the beginning of Modernism. He created some of the most famous Art Nouveau paintings worldwide and was one of the organizers of the “Jugendstil” art movement in Vienna.

The Austrian Embassy would like to honour Gustav Klimt by showing a tribute exhibition in Canada, bringing some of his art and his life to the Canadian public.

In preparing the way for modernism, Klimt shaped the artistic landscape in a unique way, his work has left still visible traces in the city of Vienna, which was at that time (1910) the fifth largest city of the world. The exhibit we are presenting picks out some of the milestones in this development, from historicism in the early phase all the way to the beginnings of abstract painting. 

This exhibition focuses on the artist by recreating the atmosphere of his era through historical photographs, biographical documentations and reproductions of his finest and most famous works of art. It was shown in the National Arts Centre, at the University of Ottawa, during the Viennese Ball of Montreal, in the Roy Thomson Hall and at the University of York with great success. It will be shown at the University of Victoria Universität, at the University of Alberta - and at the Annual Conference of the Austrian Studies Association.