Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter

Celebrates the legacies of these two pioneers, who each broke the reigning aesthetic boundaries of the time to find new vocabularies and create powerful agendas for modern painting and sculpture. Arranged in dialogue with the Legion of Honor’s acclaimed collection of Rodin works, KLIMT & RODIN will provide an incredibly rare opportunity for American audiences to see a range of signature works by the Austrian master Klimt, many of which will travel to the U.S. for the first time.

“This will be an exceptional and breathtaking opportunity to experience the art of Gustav Klimt in San Francisco,” says Max Hollein, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “And as a native Viennese, I am especially proud that we are able to present the beloved works by Klimt at the Legion of Honor. With our important Rodin collection, we are perfectly situated to engage Klimt’s masterpieces in dialogue with Rodin’s oeuvre.”

This first major Klimt exhibition on the West Coast will survey the span of the artist’s practice. Among the 33 works by Klimt that will be exhibited are iconic paintings, such as Nuda Veritas (1899), Klimt’s response to the conservative views of the art establishment, on loan from the Österreichisches Theatermuseum; Upper Austrian Farmhouse (1911), in his landscape style, loaned by the Belvedere in Vienna; Portrait of Ria Munk III (1917) from the Lewis Collection; and The Virgin (1913), loaned from the National Gallery in Prague, in which Klimt’s use of color is on full display. 

A key moment of the exhibition will be the meeting between Klimt and Rodin in 1902. While Klimt, the president of the Vienna Secession, was still developing his signature style, Rodin was at the peak of his international fame. Vienna was honored to welcome the sculptor, who had exhibited several key works at the Vienna Secession — one of the most innovative manifestations of Viennese Modernism — the year prior. Rodin visited the exhibition in person and was fascinated by its temple-like space and the groundbreaking Beethoven Frieze, which lead to a meeting between the two artists. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum press release.         

Whether you go or not, the opulent exhibition catalog, Klimt & Rodin: An Artistic Encounter, highlights the remarkable parallels between Gustav Klimt and Auguste Rodin: their passion for the human figure, erotic subject matter, pioneering techniques, and the achievement of international success. In chapters of alternating perspectives, this book features essays on fin-de-siècle Vienna, the phenomenon of artistic celebrity, and a tribute to the two seminal works that each artist gave the same name: The Kiss. Bringing these two masters together for the first time in such a detailed manner, this book captures a significant moment in European culture and demonstrates why their geniuses still speak so profoundly to us today.  On the 100th anniversary of their deaths, Klimt and  Rodin are celebrated as two pioneers of modernism who set new standards in their chosen media. Although they worked in different media, Auguste Rodin and Gustav Klimt were two artists whose output generated both incredible enthusiasm and virulent denunciation in their lifetimes.

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