Immerse yourself in Gustav Klimt
In the EmotionHall the founder of Viennese Secessionism as you’ve never seen him before
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Shortly before Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was born, Vienna underwent major changes, laying the foundations for what would become a modern and avant-garde city in the following decades. In 1857 the boundary walls around the ancient center gave way to a ring of roads, along which new and imposing buildings were built, the fulcrum of the social and economic life of the country. Klimt, one of the greatest voices of the Viennese Secessionism founded in 1897, grew up in the city where the seeds of Jugendstil and Modernism were cultivated, with an architectural profile shaped in part by his fellow secessionist (architect and urban planner) Otto Wagner, who in 1893 he had won the competition for the new city master plan which included metropolitan and Donaukanal. A golden age which also includes the practice of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), inventor of psychoanalysis with which Klimt’s work is closely connected.
This is the extraordinary atmosphere that is exceptionally relived in the exhibition «Gustav Klimt. Symphony of immersive art», visible from 26 November to 30 April in the EmotionHall of the Meeting Place Tiare Shopping (Ingka Centers Group) in Villesse (Go), in Maranuz 2 (emotionhallarena.com, tel. 0481/099480). Produced and created by Tiare, with the collaboration of Stefano Fake for the artistic production, the technical support of Ipermediastudio and Mcube and the consultancy of Civita Mostre e Musei, the exhibition allows you to enter the texture of the Viennese artist’s masterpieces, which in addition to painting mastered several techniques, from mosaic to ceramics.
The young assistant of the painter and engraver Ferdinand Laufberger, created the decoration of the courtyard of the Kunsthistorisches Museum designed by his master and since then, within a few years, he was the author of various public commissions which in 1888 earned him the official merit from Emperor Francis Giuseppe and the appointment as honorary member of the Universities of Munich and Vienna. After frescoing the palaces of power, in 1902 he created the Beethoven Frieze in the Viennese Secession Building, a 34-metre-long painting created on three walls with casein on plaster and semi-precious stones, an allegorical depiction inspired by the Ninth Symphony, full of references to sexual organs that made the critics indignant, a real scandal conceived in defense of the freedom of art, at the opening of the XIV exhibition of the artists of the Viennese Secession.
The first permanent immersive arena in Italy, with its 2 thousand square meters and more of modular and interactive surface dedicated to art, culture and entertainment, the EmotionHall is a real museum of the future where you can admire and discover the secrets of the creation of icons such as the Beethoven Frieze, “The Kiss” (1907-08), a canvas jealously guarded in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna, or the coeval and equally famous “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I”, protector and muse by Klimt to whom he commissioned several paintings. The latter, after countless and intricate vicissitudes that began with the Nazi confiscation, was purchased in 2006 by the billionaire Ronald Lauder for 135 million dollars and has since been on permanent display in the Neue Galerie in New York City.
Inspired by the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, Klimt uses the color gold in these and many of his other works, which gives the compositions, in perfect liberty style, warm light and depth. In «The kiss» he gives shape to the power of eros, to the conflict between male and female and to the life and death drives that dwell in the subconscious. The exhibition allows you to enter deeply into each brushstroke, to explore by closely exploring the details and to fully grasp the symbolism and hidden meanings that the artist expresses, for example in the pair of lovers through the contrast between the diaphanous and shiny skin of the figure feminine, full of circular and spiral elements, and the more livid colors of man, characterized by angular geometries.
His unmistakable decorativeness has inspired numerous design objects, such as the armchair exhibited along the path where everything is amplified through the astonishing play of mirrors and lights, sensory tunnels that envelop and “capture” the viewer like Alice in Wonderland, catapulting him to inside his paintings, decorative details, poems, ideas and thoughts, to the sound of the melodies that Klimt himself loved to hear: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and Mahler.
«Aarchitecture, sculpture, decoration, music and digital art come together to excite, fascinate and amaze young and adult audiences, inviting them to deepen their knowledge of the man and the artist, the understanding of his works, the stylistic interpretation through the spectacular scene of painting technique. A total, seamless immersion in the symbolic, enigmatic and sensual world of Gustav Klimt, a universal artist who gave an image to the culture of his time, to new tastes and lifestyles», explain the organizers of the exhibition.
Even Klimt would be struck and moved by this innovative way of enjoying his painting, because, as he himself said: «To each time its art and to each art its freedom».