More Than 150 Drawings and Paintings by Master Viennese Expressionist Gustav Klimt to Fill the Entire Museum

Klimt Studio to Be Reconstructed Inside the Exhibition Galleries

NEW YORK (June 8, 2007)—On October 18, 2007, the Neue Galerie opens “Gustav Klimt: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections,” with more than 150 drawings and paintings by the controversial artist, on view together for the first time. In addition, the exhibition will feature an exact reconstruction, with original furnishings, of a room from the Klimt studio. “Gustav Klimt” unites the collections of Ronald Lauder and Serge Sabarsky, co-founders of the Neue Galerie, and will fill all the gallery spaces in the museum. Together their collections comprise the finest gathering of works by Klimt in the United States. The exhibition is organized by Renée Price, Director of the Neue Galerie. This is its sole venue, where it will be on view through June 30, 2008.

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was one of the giants of twentieth-century art. As the founder and first president of the Secession in 1897, Klimt was a central figure in the cultural life of Vienna’s Golden Age. As an artist, he provided a crucial link between nineteenth-century Symbolism and Modernism. His sensual portrayals of women and richly patterned landscapes anticipated many of the formal advances of his peers. Klimt pushed the boundaries of artistic expression and developed a unique pictorial vocabulary, drawing from sources of the past to create a refined, delicate, highly evocative style. Klimt’s work embodies the quintessence of fin de siècle Vienna.

The magnificently illustrated and accessibly written exhibition catalogue, edited by Renée Price and published by Prestel, is designed for the general reader, as well as artists and art historians. It features essays by Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Emily Braun, Alessandra Comini, Ronald S. Lauder, Sophie Lillie, Tobias Natter, and Renée Price, among others, and an interview with Maria Altmann.

Source: Neue Galerie preliminary press release on the Klimt exhibition