VIENNA

Here are some of the pictures I took in Vienna this summer.

This beautiful portrait can be seen in Belvedere Museum in Vienna. Here you can also admire The Kiss and many other important works of Gustav Klimt. Klimt found an original technique to paint the dress of the model, from the distance looks so light and transparent and really complicated, but if you approach, you see only some very simple, long and thin brush strokes. The other portrait in which he employs a similar technique, is the one of Shubert. Klimt's portraits in Belvedere really opened my apetite for working in oil again.

Leopold Museum has one of the most important Egon Schile's collections, but many other artists are represented, like Klimt or some expressionist painters.

I really wanted to see this self-portrait of Richard Gerstl in real-life. In all the images I saw it, the background was either blue or green and I wanted to see for myself the real colour. Gerstl had a very short and tormented life, he didn't get along with many artists and he fell deeply in love with the wife of Schoenberg. Not a very wise thing to do, as Mathilde was some years older and had some young children to care for. The composer had the bad ideea to invite the young artist in his home and to order more family portraits. Gerstl did them in his way and style, highly stylized heads anticipated German expressionism. Mathilde and Gerstl ran away together, but she came back to her children and husband some months later. Unfortunately Gerstl killed himself at only 25. Such a loss, the same as in the case of Henri Gaudier, who died in the war at only 24, or Francesca Woodman who died at 22. Nevertheless all these young artists left great artworks behind.