Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter fascinated by Japanese art and the female form. He was a member of the Vienna Secession movement and, on trips to Venice and Ravenna, he discovered the mosaics that would inspire his famed use of gold.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), which took Klimt three years to create, is a stunning example of the Viennese Jugendstil style. With the subject's face emerging from the background like a lucid dream, the portrait is hauntingly beautiful. Seized by the Nazis in the 1940s, the painting was eventually recovered and today is on display at the Neue Galerie in New York.