Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, 1907, 138 cm x 138 cm (54 in x 54 in)
A few yards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Neue Galerie, a house museum that showcases Austrian and German art and design from the early 20th century. I made the pilgrimage to see this Gustav Klimt painting which sold in 2006 to the Neue Galerie for 135 million dollars....basking in its gold glow, I was not disappointed. Can there be a more gloriously beautiful portrait of a woman? Of course there are many, but this one is right up there.
I found this somewhat sad passage on the museum website....one of the few written statements (undated) ever left by Klimt:
Linger over a cappuccino in the museum's Cafe Sabarsky, surrounded by Josef Hoffman period lighting fixtures, Adolf Loos furniture, and Otto Wagner fabrics, and ponder how excellent it would be if we could travel back and time and tell people like Klimt and Morris what an amazing influence they are having on people a century later.
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