Gustav Klimt: Houses at Unterach on the Attersee

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918), Houses at Unterach on the Attersee, oil on canvas 43¼ x 43¼ in. (110 x 110 cm.) Painted circa 1916, Image Source:Christie’s

“Even to this day, the shorefront of Unterach on the Attersee retains much of the appearance captured by Klimt circa 1916–ninety years ago. In Klimt’s rendering of the Houses in Unterach on the Attersee, the traditional appearance of the houses is at odds with the intense modernity of their depiction. The interlocking forms in this picture reveal an inner logic, a coherence of appearance that unites the man-made and the natural elements in an almost organic whole. The deliberate avoidance of any sense of depth in this colorful tapestry of forms and planes results in the figurative image of the town verging on the brink of abstraction, Klimt bringing out a hidden beauty, conjuring the appearance of an underlying structure that defines not only the painting, but also reality itself. The geometric forms that comprise this landscape–emphasized by the square format of the canvas that contains them–become a code, a linguistic key to a deeper and more profound understanding of nature and existence themselves-while Houses in Unterach on the Attersee is a bold, modern and vivacious picture, its colors filled with life, it also remains an object of wonder and contemplation.”
READ FULL ESSAY: Christie’s