Female Nude Bending Forward

Description

Gustav Klimt
Woman in Robe
Graphite on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.84
Gustav Klimt
Female Nude Bending Forward
(Nude woman, bent over leaning on her hands)
1907
Graphite on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.104
Gustav Klimt
Female Nude Seated (Sitting crouched woman from
the front, repeated at the edge of the sheet)
Study for lovers in Tod und Leben (Death and Life)
1908–09
Graphite on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.105
This woman, one half of a pair of lovers in Death and Life, is the most frequently sketched figure in the composition. In this sketch, Klimt appears to have experimented with an idea for the woman’s general form, sketching a quick contour drawing on the lower portion of the paper, before creating a larger, more detailed study above. In most preparatory sketches for this figure, as well as in the final painting, her face is covered either by her hands or hair. Here, Klimt has made the viewer privy to the woman’s face and her downturned, self-absorbed expression. Klimt finished Death and Life in 1911, but returned to the subject later, finishing a second version in 1916 that was one of the last completed allegorical paintings. In both versions, this figure clings to her male companion, and the pair make up the base of an entangled mass of humans and abstract colors.