Turns out Adele Bloch-Bauer wasn’t the only golden gal in Gustav Klimt’s life. Though she was the only one he rendered twice, the painter, who liked to go commando under his artist’s smock, depicted a galaxy of well-heeled lovelies.
And his reputation as a Lothario may have saved the life of one of them.
So we learn at the Neue Galerie’s new show, “Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age, 1900-1918.” Here, along with both Bloch-Bauer portraits, are three generations of the Pulitzer clan: the imperial Charlotte; her daughter, Szeréna Lederer, and Szeréna’s daughter, Elisabeth.
As curator Tobias Natter tells it, Szeréna was one of the best-dressed women of her day, and among Klimt’s most devoted patrons. The artist dined with her family every week; Elisabeth called him “uncle.”
But in 1938, when the Nazis marched into Austria, Szeréna came forward with a startling claim.
“She wanted to protect her [Jewish] daughter from their racial laws,” Natter says. “She said, ‘This is the daughter of the Aryan painter Klimt.’ ” Since DNA tests had yet to be invented and neither Lederer’s husband nor Klimt was still alive to dispute it, Elisabeth was spared a possible death sentence.
Her portrait is among Klimt’s loveliest. Slender and dark-eyed, she seems, in her white dress, like some ghostly, but gorgeous, apparition afloat against a brilliantly colored, vaguely Asian backdrop.
There are many other beautiful women in this show, their portraits, like “Adele Bauer-Bloch II,” on loan from private collectors. Don’t miss the full-length, life-size one of Mäda Primavesi. She was only 9 when Klimt painted her, but — arms almost defiantly tucked behind her — she has the confidence of someone a decade older.
Displayed with the paintings are jewelry, furniture and dresses from that golden period, the dresses and hats reproduced by contemporary designers based on those made by Klimt’s companion, Emilie Flöge, a woman who knew how to look the other way when she had to.
And then there are the drawings. Whenever Klimt needed a break from painting, Natter says, he’d leave his studio and go next door to sketch the nude women he seemingly kept on retainer.
“If he did one portrait and two landscapes per year, that would have been enough to buy a villa,” Natter muses. Instead, Klimt spent it on women. And we are the richer for it.
“Klimt and the Women of Vienna’s Golden Age,” through Jan. 16. The Neue Galerie, Fifth Avenue at 86th Street; NeueGalerie.org
