Two Girls With Oleander - Gustav Klimt
This youthful work is one of Klimt’s rare paintings in which the figures are in a real and recognizable natural outdoor setting, a setting that has not yet been transfigured into a precious ornamental arabesque as in his mature works. In Two Girls with Oleander, though not yet thirty, Klimt demonstrated his total mastery of painting. During these years his interest focused on English art from the Victorian era and mainly pre-Raphaelite painting. This was the moment in which Klimt went beyond the narrow confines of painting as a historical reconstruction or photographic realism and embarked on the path of stylistic decoration that would, within a few short years, lead him to the full poetics of symbolism.
Three elements come to fore in this painting by Gustav Klimt: warm amber and rose tones, delicacy of images and symbols, and balance. The gold beading on the girl's veil stands out as though three dimensional and glistening. The texture of stone, cloth, flowers, and skin appeared so real.
Two Girls with Oleander is an intensely emotionally evocative piece (oil on canvas, 1890-92, 55 x 128 cm.). One is at first drawn to the glistening hair cloth worn by the taller girl in black-there is something at once sophisticated and delicate about her clothing and pose as well as her interest in the flowers. She appears to be showing the younger girl with reddish hair something detailed about the flowers - perhaps their form and beauty.
The combination of colors the Klimt uses in this painting is stunning-the warm tones in the skin, walls, and hair accompanied by blacks, darker green, and reds. Klimt's use of gold in the painting adds stunning textural and emotional effects.The bits of gold add interest and stunning realism - the viewer can almost 'feel' the clothing. The warmth and texture of the amber stone pillar and wall in the background are complemented by warm red and pinks of the tree and flowers.
The painting has a "natural" and "real" feel to it. The painting reminds the viewer of a photograph in the way it captures a moment in time-and the viewer is left wondering what the story in the painting is. Behind the girls, the wall seems to have fluidity to it in much the way the head veil does. Hands and arms are mirrored in realistic tree branches-both reach and lean slightly. The flowering tree is both sturdy and delicate-an interesting contradiction that is echoed in the two girls (both very strong in form and yet delicate). In these ways, even the inanimate objects in the painting seemed alive.
This is a beautiful painting and one in which Klimt expresses the delicacy, beauty, and sparkle of the female. It seems to tell a story-one which the viewer can imagine for themselves. And so therefore this piece, like children's storybook illustrations, speaks to the viewer. It is unlike Klimt's later works in that it is, more realistic and less fluid. However, in all Klimt's work, his use of color is stunning.
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was an Austrian painter and illustrator who began his career primarily as a decorator and painter of staircases in the Burgtheater and the Kunthistorisches museums in Vienna. He attended the Vienna School of Decorative Arts and is known for his work on the Beethoven Frieze (1902), in the Secession building in Vienna, and for his work at the Vienna University. Klimt's murals for Vienna University were criticized for being too bold and too decorative. Klimt viewed himself as more of an illustrator than a painter, and was more interested in murals and illustration than other forms of artwork. His work was colorful (with a lot of gold and silver as well, an influence from his father who was a metal artist), emotional, and fluid. Klimt began, in part, the Secession Movement that was intent on individual expression outside of conservative ideals set forth by the Academy of Fine Arts. He intended, through his work, to evoke a pleasing aesthetic sense. His work was in part Symbolist, emphasizing feeling over logic or historical fact.
