Gustav Klimt

 

 

 

Gustav Klimt was an influential Austrian painter of the late 19th Century, one of the founders and leaders of the Vienna Secession art movement, although he would later move beyond it.

Klimt was born in Vienna, in 1862, into a lower middle-class family of Moravian origin. His father, Ernst Klimt, worked as an engraver and goldsmith, earning very little, and the artist's childhood was spent in relative poverty. The painter would have to support his family financially throughout his life.