GUSTAV Klimt was a busy, busy man. When he wasn’t fathering 14 or more illegitimate children, the Austrian expressionist was shaking up the art world with sublime, often erotic paintings and drawings.
More than 120 of them go on display today at the Neue Gallerie, best known as the home of the world’s most expensive painting: Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” for which the museum reportedly paid $135 million.
But before and after he painted that golden woman, Klimt drew . . . beautifully.
His charcoal drawings of men, women and children are so finely detailed, they look like photographs.
“He was a master draftsman,” says museum director Renee Price, who curated the show she calls “the first Klimt retrospective in America.” It has conveniently opened the same week as “Klimt,” the art-house flick starring John Malkovich.
Not only is the complete span of his work exhibited here – paintings, drawings, friezes, lithographs – but so are artifacts from his life. Among them are a photo of the grim, factory-like building where the artist, one of seven children, was born into poverty, plus family snapshots, cuff links and, enshrined behind glass, one of the long blue smocks he wore while working (though this one, minus even a spot of paint, looks as if it’s been freshly dry-cleaned).
On the museum’s third floor – past the landing with its full-length photograph of Klimt cradling a cat – is a faithful re-creation of the artist’s studio, down to the skeleton that stood in one corner. The music he listened to – Schubert, Strauss, Brahms and Beethoven (you can buy the CD in the gift shop) – fill the gallery, and the whole thing is so evocative of the artist’s life that “you can practically smell the linseed oil,” Price says.
Or not. While many of the paintings are familiar, it’s the drawings that stand out here, particularly the early portraits and the later, erotic nudes of women, be they young, old or pregnant. (In keeping with the erotic element of his work, the Neue is presenting a film series in its lower-level café, starting tomorrow with “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”)
“No realm of human life is too insignificant and small to offer room for artistic efforts,” Klimt said, as he introduced a group exhibit in 1908.
“Even the most unprepossessing thing, if it is perfectly executed, can help increase the beauty of this Earth.”
In his 55 years on Earth, he saw beauty everywhere. From now through June 30, it’s on display at the Neue Gallerie.
To see more of Klimt’s paintings and drawings, visit nypost.com