from : The Art Newspaper
Egon Schiele's dream to save Klimt studio close to realisation
VIENNA. Gustav Klimt?s studio is to be restored and opened to visitors. Last month The Art Newspaper was given exclusive access to the site, on the eve of an agreement which is expected to be signed later this month between the Austrian governmentand Vienna?s Belvedere Museum.
Once a small country cottage surrounded by fruit trees, the house at 11 Feldmühlgasse was expanded several times after Klimt?s death. The plan now is to demolish 90% of the building, leaving only the original core which Klimt occupied from 1912 until his death in 1918.
The studio lies seven kilometres west of the centre of Vienna, in Heitzing, in what was then countryside. Klimt was living in his mother?s apartment in Westbahnstrasse, in town, and renting a workspace offered a place where he could embrace a more Bohemian lifestyle.
There was scandalous talk of what went on at the studio, with models wandering around in the nude. According to his artist friend Carl Moll, every day ?several were at his beck and call?. Klimt was a notorious womaniser, and there were rumours that he eventually fathered up to 16 children.
When Klimt rented the small house, which was built in around 1860, he installed a large window on the north side, enabling him to use the main room as his studio. He lavished great love on the garden, tending roses among the yew trees. Two of his original rose bushes still survive, and these are also immortalised in his 1912 painting Orchard with Roses.
Following Klimt?s death in 1918, his friend Egon Schiele (who himself was to die later that year) made what was then regarded as a crazy suggestion. He wrote about the Feldmühlgasse studio: ?Nothing should be removed?because everything connected with Klimt?s house is a gesamtkunstwerk [total work of art] which must not be destroyed. The unfinished pictures, brushes, easel and palette should not be touched, and the studio should be opened as a Klimt Museum for the few who enjoy and love art.?
It is almost miraculous that Klimt?s studio has survived. The family who owned the house sold it in 1923, and the new buyer converted it into a villa, considerably expanding the ground floor and adding another level. During the Nazi period, the house was forcibly sold (Aryanized), and in 1948 it was restituted to the pre-war owners, who six years later sold it to the state. Although initially the building was to be demolished, in 1957 it was converted into a primary school, with a new block of classrooms constructed in the garden.
The school closed in the late 1980s, and the garden was to have been divided into building plots, with the original house again facing demolition. Although a group of Klimt devotees campaigned to save the studio, as recently as three years ago a Russian property company wanted to completely redevelop the site. Arguably, the Belvedere?s loss of five Klimt paintings in a restitution case brought last year by the Bloch-Bauer descendants galvanised the authorities into action.
The Austrian government has now agreed to save the studio, and is to hand the property over to the Belvedere (which still has the largest collection of Klimt paintings). It will be offered rent-free, together with a contribution of ?2m ($2.9m) for the restoration. Chief curator Dr Alfred Weidinger (author of the Klimt catalogue raisonné, published this month by Prestel) is overseeing the project.
All post-1918 additions to the building will be demolished, and the original four-room bungalow restored as closely as possible to how it originally looked. What makes the reconstruction of Klimt?s studio such an important opportunity is the survival of the furniture, which had been made by Wiener Werkstätte designer Josef Hoffmann.
This was created as an ensemble, and was designed for Klimt?s requirements, with a large wall cabinet for his books and equipment, and seats for talking with clients. Originally made for an earlier studio in Josefstädter Strasse, the furnishing were moved to Feldmühlgasse in 1912.
Six years later the Hoffmann furniture passed to Klimt?s nephew, Julius Zimpel, and in the 1990s his descendants sold it to a private collector, Viennese lawyer Ernst Ploil. Two of Ploil?s pieces have just gone on display at the Neue Galerie in New York, in a major Klimt exhibition (until 30 June 2008).
Such was the influence of Hoffmann?s furniture on Klimt that he apparently used the black-and-white band design from it as a decorative element in the background of his Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. This important painting was among those restituted last year from the Belvedere and it was subsequently bought by Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie.
Dr Weidinger is now seeking other Klimt items for the Feldmühlgasse studio. Last month, the textile company Backhausen offered to provide a carpet to Hoffmann?s original design. Another collector is to lend Japanese prints and African sculptures originally owned by Klimt.
The modern classroom block in Feldmühlgasse, close to the studio, will be demolished, to be replaced by a Klimt study centre. This will house the artist?s archive, which is owned by the Belvedere. Although two thirds of Klimt?s garden has over the decades been lost to new apartments, it still remains a tranquil spot, and it will be brought back to its original form. Klimt?s visitors recall it full of bumblebees and songbirds.
The hope is that Schiele?s dream about the Klimt studio being saved will finally be realised in 2009, almost a century later.
