Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) is the one artist whose name we associate in particular with Viennese Jugendstil and the “Golden Age”.

As a sought-after painter of frescoes and the founding president of the Vienna Secession, as the portraitist of fashionable ladies and as an illustrator of unashamed eroticism, Klimt was both the enfant terrible and the darling of Viennese society, who created icons of art history with works like The Kiss and his portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer.