KLINGER, Max

Already in the 1880s Max Klinger, then living in Paris as a student, focused on the project of creating a monument in honour of Ludwig van Beethoven. As he once said, he had the first ideas for a sculpture when playing the piano. In the first version of the later monument Klinger realised his idea in gypsum and coloured it vividly.

Max Klinger presented his Beethoven sculpture for the first time in public at the Vienna Secession Exhibition in 1902. The unusual sculpture caused a public indignation because it was regarded as inadequate and consequently met with derision. Later Klinger sold the sculpture to the city of Leipzig. From then on, his monument was seen as the ideal of a heroic Beethoven monument, showing the composer as an epitome of the human mind which can become godlike through achievement.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C minor op. 67 (1st mvt)

From 1886 to 1897 Klinger devoted himself primarily to painting, usually on a grandiose scale. Among his paintings are Judgment of Paris and Christ on Olympus (both in Vienna).

The writer Elsa Asenijeff, n�e Packeny, met Klinger in 1898 and was his partner and model for many years. Coming from the Austrian upper middle class and previously married to a Bulgarian diplomat, she shone in Leipzig society with her education, elegance and extravagant demeanor. She has also written about Klinger’s artistic work. The daughter Desir�e emerged from the connection with Klinger, but the couple separated a few years before the artist’s death. Elsa died on April 5, 1941 at the age of 73 in Bräunsdorf near Freiberg, Saxony.

Klinger portrayed Elsa Asenijeff several times, but only completed the present one, which Julius Vogel, a close friend of Klinger, described as his best female portrait bust. The conception and treatment are similar to the Salome (Museum der Bildenden K�nste, Leipzig). She has the childlike trait that Klinger already captures in the preliminary drawing for Salome, a portrait drawing of a Parisian girl, called by the artist “the archetype of the new Salome”.

Klinger was an accomplished pianist and counted the composer Max Reger among his friends. A friendship with the composer Johannes Brahms developed over a period of 20 years, culminating with Klinger’s publication of his print series Brahms Fantasies (1894) and Brahms’s dedication of Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Opus 121, to Klinger in 1896, a year before the composer’s death.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Johannes Brahms: Waltz, Op. 39 No.15 A flat major

From 1886 to 1897 Klinger devoted himself primarily to painting, usually on a grandiose scale. Among his paintings are Judgment of Paris and Christ on Olympus (both in Vienna).