Gustav Klimt Hope Analysis

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Modern Art of Hope, II
Gustav Klimt, who was the symbolism artist, painted Hope, II on canvas in 1907-1908 using oil paint, gold, and platinum. It’s 43 1/2 x 43 1/2” (110.5 x 110.5 cm) in size. The painting is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It is in the Painting and Sculpture I, Gallery 4, Floor 5. Klimt chose a nude pregnant woman with the unborn child and three women in the painting because he wanted people to analyze and feel his artwork. Therefore, Klimt’s symbolic is working with color tone, representative characters, and the image of the painting are influential to people’s feelings in Hope, II.
The color tonality is important to show Klimt’s symbolism in the painting with a varied color scheme and shapes. …show more content…

Klimt commonly painted of females in the collection. The label says, “Although images of women and children are frequent in the history of art, depictions of pregnancy are rare.” Klimt liked to put a pregnant model on the canvas, that is a different form than the old classic. Moreover, all of the women are flat without shadows or three dimensions because the gold and colors in decorative are lots of details. The robe of the pregnant woman is too long and draped over the three women. When she looked down at the child’s skull on her stomach and closed her eyes, the image symbolizes death in the womb. Below, three young women are deeply prayerful with their hands and weeping for the mother and her child in the risk situation. They hope that if the child dies unborn will not influence the mother to get a sick or death, too. The mother is sad in her heart that maybe her baby is lost. Therefore, the characters representing a pregnant woman and the three sobbing women are praying for their hope on the canvas and that symbol is life or …show more content…

Klimt’s goal is painting in the natural environmental and drawing interest to a half of naked pregnant woman while beautifying the scene with various of colors, and shapes in a long robe with her unborn child’s skull on her stomach. Below, the weeping women in the cover of a robe are deeply prayerful for their hope because the mother and her womb can put their life at risk. Finally, Klimt was feeling pleasure for his artwork because he studied the painting of Japanese art, Byzantine gold leaf painting. Overall, this gives viewers an understanding of the mother has a baby in her belly and a small skull on her stomach, which symbol is life or death because the three young women are praying for both the mother and a baby to become hopefully

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