Gustav Klimt: The Gold Phase, The Kiss, 27 Years with Emilie, and His Last Words

May 27, 2026

Klimt The Kiss wall art biography DeckArts Berlin

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Quick answer

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) founded the Vienna Secession in 1897 and created 23.75-karat gold leaf paintings across his Gold Phase (c.1899–1910). The Kiss (c.1908, Belvedere Vienna) was purchased for 25,000 Kronen. His last words: “Fetch Emilie.” He and Emilie Flöge were together 27 years, never married. The Kiss single deck (~$140) and Tree of Life triptych (~$310) at DeckArts. Ships from Berlin.

Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was born the son of a gold engraver in Baumgarten near Vienna and died from pneumonia following a stroke aged 55, his last words calling for the woman he had been with for 27 years but never married. Between these two moments he co-founded the Vienna Secession, developed the most celebrated gold-leaf painting programme in modern art history, and produced approximately 230 paintings and 4,000 drawings. DeckArts Berlin: The Kiss single (~$140) and Tree of Life triptych (~$310). External references: Belvedere Vienna — Klimt Collection; MAK Vienna — Stoclet Frieze Designs. View The Kiss at DeckArts →

Klimt’s Biography: Vienna, the Secession, and the Gold

Gustav Klimt was born on 14 July 1862 in Baumgarten bei Wien (a suburb of Vienna), the second of seven children of Ernst Klimt, a gold engraver from Bohemia, and Anna Finster. His father’s trade — gold engraving, the incision of decorative patterns in gold surfaces — is the direct material inheritance in Klimt’s mature work: the 23.75-karat gold leaf that defines the Gold Phase is both a technical and a biographical connection to his father’s workshop.

Klimt trained at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule) from 1876 to 1883 alongside his brother Ernst (who died in 1892, a blow from which Klimt reportedly never fully recovered) and their friend Franz Matsch. The three established a successful decorative painting practice (Künstlercompagnie) in the 1880s and received major public commissions for ceiling decorations in the Burgtheater (1886–1888) and the Kunsthistorisches Museum (1890–1891). These early commissions established Klimt’s ability to work at monumental scale and gave him access to the institutional art world of Vienna — which he subsequently rejected.

The University paintings (1900–1907): Klimt was commissioned to produce three ceiling paintings (Philosophy, Medicine, Jurisprudence) for the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. When the paintings were exhibited as preparatory works in 1900–1903, they provoked the most severe hostile critical reception of Klimt’s career: 87 professors signed a petition against them; the Ministry of Education returned the commission. The University paintings are now known only through photographs — they were destroyed by the SS in May 1945 when they burned the Immendorf Palace, where they had been stored during the war.

Klimt died on 6 February 1918, aged 55, from pneumonia following a stroke he had suffered on 11 January 1918. The 1918 influenza pandemic accelerated his deterioration. He had reportedly been in good health immediately before the stroke. His last documented words, spoken in hospital, were “Hol’ die Emilie” (“Fetch Emilie”) — a call for Emilie Flöge, his 27-year partner. She arrived in time; she was with him when he died. The studio he left was full of unfinished work.

The Gold Phase: 23.75-Karat Gold Leaf

Klimt’s Gold Phase (approximately c.1899–1910) is named for his systematic use of actual 23.75-karat gold leaf in his paintings — a technique with no precedent in European oil painting of the modern period. The Gold Phase was directly inspired by Klimt’s 1903 visit to Ravenna, where he saw the Byzantine gold mosaics of Sant’Apollinare in Classe and the Basilica of San Vitale. The Byzantine tradition of gold ground — in which the gold does not represent a spatial background but an eternal, non-spatial divine light — was the specific visual and conceptual model for Klimt’s gold.

The technical specification: Klimt used gold leaf at approximately 23.75 karats (98.9% gold). Gold leaf at this purity is produced by hammering gold into extremely thin sheets (approximately 0.1–0.12 micrometres thick, approximately 1,000 times thinner than a human hair). The sheets are applied to a pre-prepared section of the painting surface using a size (adhesive medium) and burnished to create a smooth, highly reflective gold surface. In Klimt’s paintings, the gold areas are sometimes left flat (high reflectance, mirror-like) and sometimes worked over with incised linear patterns (the spiral and geometric ornamental patterns that characterise his decorative programme) that catch the light at different angles.

The Gold Phase’s major works: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907, Neue Galerie New York, sold in 2006 for $135 million — then the highest price ever paid for a painting, to Ronald Lauder, after being restituted to the Bloch-Bauer family from Austria where it had been seized by the Nazis); The Kiss (1908, Belvedere Vienna); Judith I (1901, Belvedere Vienna); Danae (c.1907–1908, private collection). The gold programme ends approximately with the Stoclet Frieze designs (1905–1909) and the beginning of a post-gold phase in which colour and pattern replace the gold ground. As The Guardian’s Klimt coverage documents, the Gold Phase’s works have achieved some of the highest prices in the history of art sales.

The Kiss: 180×180 cm, 25,000 Kronen, Room 4

The Kiss (Der Kuss, c.1907–1908, oil on canvas with gold and silver leaf, 180 × 180 cm, Belvedere Vienna, Room 4) is Klimt’s most celebrated work and one of the most reproduced paintings in Western art history. It depicts a couple — a man and a woman, both robed in gold — at the edge of a flower-covered cliff, in the act of a kiss. The man’s face is partially visible in profile; the woman’s face is turned toward the viewer in a slight tilted-down position with closed eyes.

The commission and purchase: The Kiss was exhibited at the 1908 Vienna Kunstschau and immediately purchased by the Austrian government (specifically the k.k. Österreichische Staatsgalerie) for 25,000 Kronen — the full asking price, without negotiation. This was an exceptional act of institutional recognition: the Austrian government purchased the work directly from the 1908 exhibition before any private collector could acquire it. The painting has been at the Belvedere in Vienna ever since.

The biographical identification: the couple in The Kiss is widely identified as Klimt and Emilie Flöge. The man’s profile corresponds to Klimt’s known appearance (as documented in photographs and in other works); the woman’s figure corresponds to Emilie Flöge’s documented appearance. The identification is not confirmed in any surviving document by Klimt himself, but the biographical consensus among Klimt scholars is that the couple is autobiographical. The Kiss is the most specific visual record of the 27-year partnership that ended with the words “Fetch Emilie.” See: Klimt’s The Kiss: Complete Guide.

Emilie Flöge: 27 Years, the Last Word

Emilie Flöge (30 August 1874 – 26 May 1952) was a Viennese fashion designer and the co-founder (with her sisters Helene and Pauline) of the fashion salon Schwestern Flöge (Flöge Sisters) at the Casa Piccola in Vienna (1904–1938), which was one of the most significant fashion enterprises in Viennese cultural life in the early 20th century. She was one of the most forward-thinking fashion designers of the Viennese avant-garde: she designed reform dress (anti-corset, loose-fitting, inspired by the Arts and Crafts tradition) and collaborated with the Wiener Werkstätte on fabric designs.

Klimt and Emilie Flöge were connected from approximately 1891 (the year Klimt’s brother Ernst died; Emilie’s sister Helene was married to Ernst Klimt, making Emilie and Gustav Klimt relatives by marriage after Ernst’s death) until Klimt’s death in 1918 — a relationship of 27 years. They were never married and never cohabited continuously; the specific nature of their relationship (romantic partnership, close friendship, artistic collaboration, or some combination) was never publicly defined by either party and has been a subject of biographical discussion ever since.

What is documented: Klimt and Emilie spent summers together at the Attersee in Austria (where many of Klimt’s landscape paintings were made); they were photographed together extensively (a series of photographs at the Attersee in 1905–1906 shows them in matching reform dress costumes designed by Emilie); Klimt painted Emilie in Portrait of Emilie Flöge (1902, Wien Museum); and his last words — spoken to a hospital nurse after the stroke had impaired his communication — were “Hol’ die Emilie.” She survived him by 34 years; she died in Vienna on 26 May 1952, aged 77.

The Tree of Life: Stoclet Frieze, UNESCO Brussels

The Tree of Life (Lebensbaum, c.1905–1909) is the central panel of the Stoclet Frieze — the monumental decorative programme Klimt designed for the dining room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, commissioned by the Belgian banker Adolphe Stoclet and executed in collaboration with the Wiener Werkstätte. The preparatory designs are held by the MAK — Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna.

The Palais Stoclet (1905–1911, architect Josef Hoffmann) was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009 for its significance as a Gesamtkunstwerk — a total work of art in which the architecture, the furniture, the silverware, the cutlery, and the decorative programme are all integrated into a single aesthetic unity. The Stoclet Frieze is its central artistic element. The tree’s gold spirals connect earth (roots) to sky (highest branches) as an axis mundi above the dining table — the most specific domestic installation for which Klimt ever designed a gold programme. See: Klimt Tree of Life: Complete Guide.

The Vienna Secession and Jugendstil

In 1897, Klimt co-founded the Vienna Secession — an artists’ association that broke from the conservative Viennese Künstlerhaus to exhibit international avant-garde art and to promote the integration of fine art and applied design. The Secession’s motto was “Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit” (“To every age its art; to every art its freedom”). The Secession Building (1898, architect Joseph Maria Olbrich), with its golden dome of gilded laurel leaves (nicknamed the “Krauthappel” or “golden cabbage” by Viennese wits), is the movement’s architectural symbol and still stands in Vienna.

Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau, literally “youth style”) was the Austrian-German expression of the pan-European Art Nouveau movement. Klimt’s specific contribution to Jugendstil was the combination of Byzantine-derived gold grounds, Neoplatonic symbolic programmes (derived from his Lorenzo de’ Medici-parallel formation in the Vienna cultural circle of the 1880s–1890s), and the organic curvilinear vocabulary of Art Nouveau into a unified decorative-symbolic programme that is entirely his own. No other major artist of the period used actual gold leaf systematically in the way Klimt did; no other major gold-phase programme combines the Byzantine aesthetic tradition with the Art Nouveau organic line at this scale. As The Guardian’s Klimt coverage notes, the Vienna Secession’s centenary exhibitions have confirmed its centrality to European modernism’s early development.

Klimt on a Skateboard Deck

DeckArts offers two Klimt works:

The Kiss single (~$140): On navy or forest green. 23.75-karat gold from the cool organic dark at maximum warm advance. The intimate romantic programme above the bedroom headboard, in the hallway, or as a secondary living room accent. The most specific domestic romantic art object in Western art history: the couple who were together 27 years, never married, last word “Fetch Emilie.” Under 2700K warm LED on navy: chrome yellow and gold glow at maximum warm-cool complementary contrast. View The Kiss →

Tree of Life triptych (~$310): On navy or forest green. Gold spirals from organic dark above the dining table, the living room sofa, or the fireplace. The cosmic gold programme at domestic scale: the axis mundi from the Palais Stoclet’s UNESCO dining room above the dining table of a 2026 apartment. Three vertical crops of the central panel, 70 cm wide. See: Klimt Tree of Life: Stoclet Frieze Guide.

Klimt The Kiss skateboard deck DeckArts Berlin

DeckArts Klimt Collection — from ~$140

The Kiss single (~$140) · Tree of Life triptych (~$310) · 23.75-karat gold · 27 years with Emilie · UV archival 100+ years · Canadian maple · ships Berlin

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Room-by-Room Installation Guide

Bedroom above the bed (The Kiss single, romantic canonical): Single (~$140) on navy or forest green at 165–175 cm centre, 15–20 cm above headboard. Gold from dark above the couple in the bedroom. The most romantically specific above-bed installation at DeckArts: the couple who were together 27 years, his last word “Fetch Emilie.” For a wedding or anniversary gift: “Klimt painted this with 23.75-karat gold in 1908. He and Emilie Flöge were together for 27 years. His last words were ‘Fetch Emilie.’ They never married.” See: What Size Wall Art for a Bedroom.

Living room above sofa (Tree of Life triptych, Art Nouveau primary): Triptych (~$310) on navy or forest green. Art centre 155–165 cm. Gap 15–20 cm above sofa. Directed 2700K ceiling track spot. The most Art Nouveau-specific primary living room installation: gold spirals from cosmic dark above the primary domestic gathering space. See: Klimt Tree of Life: Stoclet Frieze.

Dining room (Tree of Life triptych, Stoclet reference): Triptych (~$310) on navy or forest green above or beside the dining table. The most historically specific dining room installation at DeckArts: the Tree of Life was designed for a dining room wall in the Palais Stoclet. The cosmic tree above the gathered dining table. See: Wall Art for a Dining Room 2026.

Hallway (The Kiss single, threshold): Single (~$140) on navy or forest green at 155–165 cm centre on the hallway end wall. The intimate romantic encounter at the domestic threshold: the couple at the edge of the cliff, the act of the kiss, above the space between the public world outside and the private domestic interior. See: Wall Art Ideas for a Hallway 2026.

FAQ

What are Klimt’s last words?

“Hol’ die Emilie” (“Fetch Emilie”). Klimt suffered a stroke on 11 January 1918; his reported last words, spoken in hospital, called for Emilie Flöge, his 27-year partner. She arrived in time; she was with him when he died on 6 February 1918, aged 55, from pneumonia following the stroke. They were never married. She survived him by 34 years, dying in Vienna on 26 May 1952. Belvedere Vienna. DeckArts The Kiss from ~$140.

What is Klimt’s gold leaf made of?

23.75-karat gold (98.9% pure gold), applied as gold leaf approximately 0.1–0.12 micrometres thick to pre-prepared painting surfaces. The gold ground was directly inspired by Klimt’s 1903 visit to Ravenna, where he saw the Byzantine gold mosaics of Sant’Apollinare in Classe and the Basilica of San Vitale. The same 23.75-karat gold is used in The Kiss, the Tree of Life (Stoclet Frieze designs), the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (sold 2006 for $135 million), and other Gold Phase works. Belvedere Vienna. DeckArts from ~$140.

Where is Klimt’s The Kiss?

The Kiss (c.1907–1908, 180×180 cm, oil on canvas with gold and silver leaf) is in the permanent collection of the Belvedere in Vienna, Room 4. It was purchased by the Austrian government from the 1908 Vienna Kunstschau for 25,000 Kronen — the full asking price, without negotiation. DeckArts UV archival reproduction single deck from ~$140.

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Article Summary

Klimt biography wall art: born 14 July 1862 Baumgarten bei Wien (son of gold engraver Ernst Klimt from Bohemia + Anna Finster; direct material inheritance: father’s gold engraving → 23.75-karat gold leaf in Gold Phase); trained Kunstgewerbeschule Vienna 1876–1883 (with brother Ernst + Franz Matsch); Künstlercompagnie practice 1880s (Burgtheater 1886–1888 + Kunsthistorisches Museum 1890–1891 ceiling commissions, monumental scale + institutional access + subsequent rejection of establishment); University paintings scandal (1900–1907, three ceiling paintings Philosophy/Medicine/Jurisprudence, 87 professors signed petition against them, Ministry returned commission; paintings destroyed by SS May 1945 burning Immendorf Palace = now known only from photographs); died 6 February 1918 Vienna aged 55 (stroke 11 January 1918, pneumonia, 1918 influenza pandemic accelerated deterioration; last documented words “Hol’ die Emilie” to hospital nurse; Emilie arrived in time, with him when died). Gold Phase c.1899–1910: inspired by 1903 Ravenna visit (Byzantine gold mosaics Sant’Apollinare in Classe + San Vitale; Byzantine gold ground = not spatial background but eternal non-spatial divine light = conceptual model); technical spec: 23.75-karat (98.9% pure gold), gold leaf ~0.1–0.12 micrometres thick (~1,000 times thinner than human hair), applied via size adhesive, burnished flat or incised with spiral/geometric ornamental patterns; major Gold Phase works: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907, Neue Galerie NY, sold 2006 $135M after Nazi restitution to Bloch-Bauer family, to Ronald Lauder); The Kiss (1908, Belvedere Vienna); Judith I (1901, Belvedere); Danae (c.1907–1908, private collection); Guardian Klimt coverage on record prices. The Kiss: Der Kuss c.1907–1908, oil on canvas + gold + silver leaf, 180×180 cm, Belvedere Vienna Room 4; couple at edge of flower-covered cliff in act of kiss; man’s profile partially visible; woman’s face turned toward viewer tilted-down closed eyes; purchased Austrian government from 1908 Kunstschau for 25,000 Kronen full asking price without negotiation (exceptional institutional recognition); biographical identification (couple widely = Klimt + Emilie Flöge, man’s profile + woman’s figure correspond to documented appearances; not confirmed in Klimt documents but scholarly consensus). Emilie Flöge 1874–1952: Viennese fashion designer; co-founder with sisters Helene + Pauline of salon Schwestern Flöge at Casa Piccola Vienna 1904–1938; reform dress (anti-corset, Arts and Crafts influenced); Wiener Werkstätte fabric design collaborations; connection to Klimt from c.1891 (Ernst Klimt died 1892, had married Emilie’s sister Helene, making Emilie + Gustav relatives by marriage); relationship 1891–1918 = 27 years (never married/never cohabited continuously; specific nature debated); documented: Attersee summers together (landscape paintings); 1905–1906 Attersee photos in matching reform dress; Portrait of Emilie Flöge 1902 Wien Museum; last words “Hol’ die Emilie” (called for her in hospital after stroke impaired communication; she arrived in time, was with him); survived Klimt by 34 years, died Vienna 26 May 1952 aged 77. Tree of Life: Lebensbaum c.1905–1909, central panel Stoclet Frieze (Palais Stoclet Brussels, designed Josef Hoffmann, Adolphe Stoclet commission, executed Wiener Werkstätte; UNESCO World Heritage Site 2009); preparatory designs MAK Vienna; axis mundi above dining table = tree connecting earth to sky over domestic ritual of shared eating; most specific domestic installation for which Klimt designed gold programme. Vienna Secession 1897: co-founded with others; broke from conservative Künstlerhaus; motto “Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit”; Secession Building 1898 Olbrich, gilded laurel leaf dome nicknamed Krauthappel; Jugendstil (German Art Nouveau) = Klimt’s contribution: Byzantine gold grounds + Neoplatonic symbolic programmes + Art Nouveau organic curvilinear vocabulary combined; only major artist using actual gold leaf systematically; Guardian Secession centenary coverage. On deck: The Kiss single (~$140, navy or forest green, 23.75-karat gold from cool organic dark, intimate romantic above-bed or hallway or secondary accent, wedding/anniversary gift with specific card text); Tree of Life triptych (~$310, navy or forest green, gold spirals from organic dark above dining table/living room sofa/fireplace, cosmic gold programme at domestic scale, Stoclet historical reference). Installation: bedroom above bed (The Kiss single, romantic canonical, 165–175 cm, last word Emilie gift card); living room primary (Tree of Life triptych, Art Nouveau primary, 155–165 cm); dining room (Tree of Life triptych, most historically specific – designed for dining room wall Palais Stoclet); hallway (The Kiss single, threshold intimate encounter). Belvedere Vienna + MAK Vienna + Guardian references. DeckArts from ~$140. Canadian maple. UV archival 100+ years. Berlin. 30-day return.