(Vienna 1862–1918)
Seated nude girl, from the front, with tackled legs, c. 1907, stamp: Gustav Klimt Nachlaß, blue pencil on paper, 54.5 x 35.5 cm, framed

Marian Bisanz-Prakken will include this work in the Supplement Volume to Alice Strobl‘s catalogue raisonné of Gustav Klimt‘s drawings vol. V of the Catalogue Raisonné Albertina: Gustav Klimt. Die Zeichnungen

This drawing was an addition to the luxury edition of the Gilhofer portfolio quoted in lot. no. 9.

Provenance:
Family Ownership, Vienna

The model, sitting with her legs apart and face on, testifies to Klimt’s particular interest in a timelessly heroic type of woman, which manifests itself above all in his drawings from around 1905 onwards. Ferdinand Hodler, a celebrated success at the 1904 Secession, played an important role in this new direction.
This hitherto unknown blue line work is to be dated around 1907 and can be numbered among those autonomous nude drawings in which the artist devotes himself to the “primal situations” of sitting, walking or lying down (comparable are Alice Strobl, Gustav Klimt. Die Zeichnungen, vol. II, Salzburg 1982, nos 1616, 1619, 1622).
Klimt emphasises the architectural qualities in the monumental, isolated figure, which is fused with the elevation on which it is sitting. In several spatial layers, the angularly stylised limbs, positioned at right angles or diagonally, overlap each other; the empty spaces between the body contours also interact with this linear structure. Klimt even outlines the central, strikingly emphasised pubic area geometrically, against which he brings the lower wave contour of the thighs into play as a powerful counterweight. By repeating strokes, he also accentuates the contour of the right shoulder, which forms a right angle with the outline of the face turned sideways. For all his discipline, the expression of melancholy is important to Klimt. Mental reticence and erotic permissiveness stand tensely opposite each other in the same figure.

Marian Bisanz-Prakken