Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Gaugusch, Georg. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781931794169.

Few paintings have captured the publics imagination as thoroughly as Gustav Klimts 1907 portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a prominent Viennese sugar manufacturer. The suggestive, gold-leafed painting not only rendered Bloch-Bauers irresistible beauty and sensuality; its intricate ornamentation and exotic motifs heralded the dawn of Modernity and a culture intent on radically forging a new identity. With this painting, Klimt created a secular icon that would come to stand for the aspirations of a whole generation in fin-de-siècle Vienna. But as synonymous as this famous models likeness has become with Viennas Golden Age, the real Adele Bloch-Bauer remained somewhat shielded from the public eye. Filled with well-chosen details, documentary photographs and historically related artworks, this singular, scholarly study attempts to reveal and honor the remarkable life and legacy of Adele Bloch-Bauer and her husband, Ferdinand Bloch, and their patronage of one of Austrias most radical forebears of Modernity.