Study of a girl in profile facing left Gustav Klimt

• A light, airy depiction of a young girl • Study for a painting set in the theatre in Karlsbad • Sketch-like, yet full of visual power What might this elegantly dressed girl be doing there? Dated around 1885, this drawing by Gustav Klimt takes us into the master’s sketching process. We see a young girl in a light Empire-style dress, leaning over an invisible balustrade. Her location must remain a mystery: is she attending a theatre or opera performance? Is she looking down from her window onto the street? And what is the mysterious object in her right hand, which seems to vanish into the sketch’s looseness? Indeed, Klimt approaches this study with particular delicacy, almost in keeping with the subject matter. Using black chalk with minimal highlights, he creates a fleeting snapshot. The girl thus becomes an almost ethereal apparition, beginning to take shape around the hips, only to vanish again at the forearms. The work was created in the context of Klimt’s commissions for the theatre in Karlsbad. Excessive preparation is a fundamental part of Gustav Klimt’s creative process; all his paintings are accompanied by dozens of preliminary studies and sketches. In these, Klimt meticulously records every minute detail, practising seemingly insignificant details over and over again, experimenting, developing and discarding ideas. It is therefore quite possible that Klimt is attempting here to capture a female theatregoer from Karlovy Vary society. Perhaps, however, she is an actress about to perform a balcony scene – one might think, for example, of Shakespeare’s Juliet? It is also possible that he is using a model (now anonymous) here to analyse a movement. | 1862 Baumgarten bei Wien - Wien 1918 | Moderne Kunst | Arbeiten auf Papier | Nummer: 25x2604 | Provenance: Nachlass des Künstlers, mit dem Stempel (Lugt 1575); Sammlung/Nachlass Serge Sabarsky, New York; Sammlung/Stiftung Vally Sabarsky, New York.

Estimación:16.000€

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