Drawing: Meet me in the Garden (and a book on Gustav Klimt's Drawings & Watercolors)

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My son gave me Ranier Metzger’s book on Gustav Klimt’s drawings and watercolors a few years ago, and I still get so inspired every time I pull it off the shelf. The format of the book is small and thick (see it below). I wish it were published in a larger format to study the beautifully reproduced art, with bigger text. But, that might have been too unwieldy since the book is 400 pages. Squinty fonts aside, I still love this book. It reminds me that drawing and sketching is excellent practice and it’s quick. No time for art today? Sketch something! 

I’ve always been a big Klimt fan, and I’m continually bewildered by his sense of design, composition and his use of pattern. His big paintings lead your eye to areas of richly detailed ornamentation,  right up against passages of quiet color, or softly rendered realism.  I saw five of his paintings in Los Angeles in 2006, from the collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloche-Bauer.  The scale [they are huge] and brilliance of his work in person is impossible to duplicate in print.  

Flipping through Klimt’s drawings puts me in a state of awe, and urges me to work harder… I can’t help but reach for a pencil & paper. What are your favorite art books for inspiration and insight into process?

Beautiful figure drawings

Preparatory sketches for murals

Lettering and ink drawings for poster designs

Gorgeous sketches from his early career

One of the very few drawings in the book with watercolor applied. I bet Klimt did a lot of these, and I’d love to see more.

The senior curator of the Getty Museum talks about Klimt’s drawings in this five minute video snippet called The Magic of Line.  If you’re reading this in an email or via a feed, and the video doesn’t show, you can see it here.

Art Quote
The history of Viennese art produced two notable competitors in this game; Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. Klimt [1862-1918] was touchingly supportive of both of them. Kokoschka, born in 1886, came under his wing one year earlier than Schiele, born in 1890, and both were given a major boost to their careers by the Kunstschau – Kokoschka by that of 1908, Schiele by that of 1909. ‘We are duty bound to give great talent the chance to express itself,” Klimt is reported to have said in defense of Kokoschka’s Wild Gallery at the Kunstschau. “Oskar Kokoschka is the most talented artist of the young generation. And even were we to run the risk of having our Kunstschau demolished; if it had been, then we would be ruined. But we would have done our duty.”
The Self & the Ego: Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka, Ranier Metzger

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Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art Blog