Death and Life

As one of Gustav Klimt’s main works, Death and Life is regarded as one of his greatest allegories, in which he used a bold composition to address the cycle of human life. His first sketches on paper were made as early as 1908 and were brought to oil in 1910. In its first presentation at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome, Klimt received the gold medal. For unknown reasons, he decided to fundamentally revision the work in 1915.

Klimt was able to depict the jarring entanglement of life and death through the formal and motivic contrast of a stream of naked human bodies - mother and child, an old woman, a loving couple - surrounded by colourful ornaments and flowers on the right, and the solitary, darkly dressed figure of death on the left. What originally was supposed to have been a gold background appears in the final version as grey, with death appearing almost vigorous, wrapped in a blue ornamental coat and raising a small red club, while life glows with its bright colours, figures, and ornamentation.

It is noticeable that after The Kiss and Death and Life, Klimt embarked on no other major allegorical or narrative paintings for nearly a decade.