Retrato de Adele Bloch-Bauer II

Gustav Klimt · 1912

Retrato de Adele Bloch-Bauer II - Gustav Klimt

Adele Bloch-Bauer is the only person Klimt ever painted twice. Five years after her famous golden portrait, he showed her again, standing tall in a hat and dress. The canvas was later stolen by the Nazis and fought over in court for decades.

The story behind the painting

Adele Bloch-Bauer, who lived from 1881 to 1925, was a Vienna socialite, a patron and a close friend of Gustav Klimt. She was married to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a wealthy industrialist who sponsored the arts and supported the painter. In 1907 Klimt completed a first portrait of her, the much more famous Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I. In 1912 he painted her a second time. No one else received that honour: she remains the only sitter Klimt portrayed twice. Both portraits hung in the family home in Vienna until the Second World War.

What to look for

This is a large canvas, about 190 by 120 cm, and Adele is shown standing, full of presence. Wikidata lists the details a viewer will notice first: a woman in a dress with a low neckline, and a hat. Take time to compare her in your mind with the first portrait of 1907, the shimmering golden one. Here, five years later, the same woman is seen again by the same painter, older, in a different setting and a different mood. Looking at the two side by side is the rare chance to see how Klimt returned to one face he knew well.

Meaning and intent

The meaning of this painting grew far beyond what Klimt intended. During the Second World War both Adele portraits were among the artworks the Nazis stole from the Bloch-Bauer family. After the war the second portrait was shown at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. The museum was reluctant to give the works back, and a long legal fight followed in the United States and in Austria, known through the case Republic of Austria v. Altmann. In January 2006, after a decision by an Austrian arbitration panel, the two portraits and three other Klimt paintings were returned to Maria Altmann, Ferdinand's niece.

Legacy

Once returned, the portrait travelled. In 2006 it was shown with the other restituted works at LACMA in Los Angeles and at the Neue Galerie in New York, and later the Neue Galerie briefly reunited it with Portrait I in an exhibition on the women of Vienna's golden age. From 2014 to 2016 it was on long-term loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It has since passed through private hands, and in 2022 it appeared at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. From November 2023 to February 2024 it came home to the Belvedere in Vienna for a show of its own.

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Wikipedia · Wikidata

Sobre el artista

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

mujer · retrato · vestido · de pie · sombrero

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