Art in the City - Klimt exhibit at the Legion of Honor

The Legion of Honor is currently running the Klimt & Rodin exhibition and I was lucky enough to get tickets to this enormously popular event.

Klimt and Rodin are two of the more popular artists whose works of arts I enjoy and I feel thankful to have seen this exhibition while it is in San Francisco.

While San Francisco has world class paintings hanging in its art museums, there are works of arts that reside permanently in other cities worldwide, unless their home museum is being renovated and the paintings or works of arts are on loan to other museums. I feel lucky that the museums in San Francisco have been a stop to these traveling exhibitions.

 

[read about the Girl with a Pearl Earring at De Young Museum]

I got to the Legion of Honor around 930am, I believe this is the time the museum opens on the weekend. However early I made it there, there were other people who got there before me. It was the last two weeks of the museum's Klimt & Rodin exhibit, after all. In this blog, I'll split Klimt and Rodin because it is too much to blog about. I'll show you first Klimt's works in the exhibit.

   

[read bout my Picasso blog at SF MoMA]

The tickets to go in is timed. I got the 11am group so to kill time, I lingered next to Matisse, Monet, Gaugin, Van Gogh and other Impressionist painters at the museum's permanent collections in Gallery 17.  When it was finally my time to go into the Klimt & Rodin exhibition, it was already swarming with art lovers. The exhibition occupies Galleries 9, 10, 11 and 12. By nature of habit, I went to the Gallery on my right which is Gallery 12. 

Gallery 12 contains Klimt's portraitures and landscape paintings.

   

Here are my favorites in this Gallery.

   

Portrait of Ria Munk III

Gustav Klimt

1917 (unfinished)

Oil on Canvas

   

Black Feathered Hat

Gustav Klimt

1910 

Oil on Canvas

   

Portrait of a Lady

Gustav Klimt

1917

Oil on Canvas

   

Portrait of Johanna Staude

Gustav Klimt

1917 (unfinished)

Oil on Canvas

   

Pine Forest I

Gustav Klimt

1901

Oil on Canvas

   

Farmhouse in Upper Austria

Gustav Klimt

1911

Oil on Canvas

This is the crowd in Gallery 10. When I came in the museum, I noticed right away that Gallery 10 was more crowded even though it looks like the biggest room among the exhibition rooms. It didn't occur to me right away that this is where the painting called The Virgin might be displayed. This room contained Klimt's later works, including my favorite The Virgin.

   

Here are my favorites.

   

Replica of Panel 10 and 11 from Beethove Frieze

Gustav Klimt

1984 (copy)

Casein paint, chalk,graphite,plaster and various appliqué materials

   

The Virgin

Gustav Klimt

1913

Oil on Canvas

   

Farmhouse in Upper Austria

Gustav Klimt

1917

Oil and tempera on Canvas

From Gallery 10, I walked toward the left at the back and found the smaller Gallery 9 which contained Klimt's erotic sketches.

   

From Gallery 9, I got to Gallery 8 which contains Klimt's works from his early days and the Viennese Secession.

   

Two Girls with an Oleander Bush

Gustav Klimt

1890/1892

Oil on canvas

   

Portrait of Sonja Knips

Gustav Klimt

1898

Oil on canvas

   

Poster for the first exhibition of the Viennese Secession

Gustav Klimt

1898

Color Lithograph on Paper

Adjacent to the Galleries 8 and 12 are tiny hallways leading to the main lobby. Be very slow to walk because these areas also contained sketches and studies by Gustav Klimt. 

   

Bust of a Child

(study for the painting Love)

Gustav Klimt

1895

Pencil on Paper

Frontally Viewed Standing Woman

(study for the painting Judith II)

Gustav Klimt

1908

Pencil on Paper

   

Girl with Bucket Dress

(study for the painting The Virgin)

Gustav Klimt

1911-1912

Pencil on Paper

I feel very fortunate to have seen this exhibition and see a glimpse of Klimt's great works.

 

~rl