Today, the name Gustav Klimt is most often associated with the paintings of his Golden Phase and the Vienna Secession. The exhibition The Road to Success – Early Works by Gustav and Ernst Klimt at the City Museum of Rijeka, however, takes us further back in time, to the years of their education, intensive drawing practice and first artistic commissions undertaken together. At the heart of the exhibition are five early drawings by Gustav and Ernst Klimt, created during their studies at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, today the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The works bear witness to the rigorous academic training of the young artists, in which the study of proportion, light and volume, together with extensive practice drawing from plaster casts, laid the foundations for their later artistic development. A particularly significant work is the study of an antique female head known as the Brunn Head, drawn by Gustav Klimt in 1878, when he was only fifteen years old. It is his second-oldest known work and is both signed and dated. Also on display are four studies of roses that were formerly attributed to Gustav Klimt. More recent research, however, has shown that they were created by his younger brother Ernst between 1880 and 1883. The school drawings are presented in the context of nine monumental paintings created for the Rijeka theatre in 1885. The Rijeka cycle is one of the most important surviving testimonies to the artists’ early collaborative work. The nine allegorical paintings have been restored and, since 2021, have been on display at the Sugar Refinery Palace. The exhibition offers a glimpse of Klimt before the Klimt we know today: before the Secession, the Golden Phase and international fame. It reveals that the distinctive artistic language for which he would later become renowned was preceded by years of discipline, academic training and engagement with artistic tradition, and, in particular, by mutual support and artistic dialogue between the brothers and their friend Franz Matsch. The Rijeka paintings also reveal the roots of Klimt’s later artistic language. Drawing on classical iconography, the Renaissance, the Baroque and Viennese Historicism, the young artists would only later develop their individual styles. These early works allow us to trace the path from academic exercises and traditional painting towards the modern artistic expression that would make Gustav Klimt one of the most celebrated artists of the turn of the twentieth century. The exhibition is curated by Deborah Pustišek Antić.
The Road to Success – Early Works by Gustav and Ernst Klimt is on view at the Sugar Refinery Palace from 25 September to 13 December 2026.
