![]() ![]() “With Adele Bloch-Bauer IIfive years later, he does something completely diffferent, an enormous stylistic evolution is clear.” The painting shows the raven-haired Adele in a wide-brimmed black hat standing majestically, frontally facing the viewer the background a tableau of brightly colored patterned wallpaper. ![]() ![]() The later painting is a dramatic departure: “How could Klimt have evolved from the first painting?” asks Natter. (Both became Bloch-Bauers their siblings married each other, too, making for two couples with the same hyphenated last name.) The family were avid art patrons, not only collecting but also commissioning paintings – and the maverick, kaftan-clad Gustav Klimt was one of their favorite artists. Ferdinand adored the young woman, enough to make her last name part of his own. The daughter of a bank and railway director, she led a privileged, cultured childhood at 19, she married Ferdinand Bloch, a sugar magnate 17 years her senior. Over the past century, many viewers have asked: who was Adele Bloch-Bauer?īloch-Bauer was born Adele Bauer in Vienna in 1881. The painting later became an icon of justice – the 2015 film Woman in Gold is the Hollywood version of the tale of the painting’s confiscation from the Jewish Bloch-Bauer family during World War Two and the long but ultimately successful struggle for restitution by Bloch-Bauer’s niece Maria Altmann. In postwar Vienna her image became a symbol of Austrian culture – Adele Bloch-Bauer I was long called ‘the Austrian Mona Lisa’. ![]()
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