The magnificent Belvedere Palace in Vienna presents in its museum space two beautiful exhibitions about the art of Gustav Klimt, one of the masters of the Vienna Secession.

The Belvedere occupies a central place in the history of Viennese modernism, exhibiting Austrian art in an international context for over a century. The majority of works by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), including The Kiss and Judith as highlights, and those by Egon Schiele (1890-1918) and Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), are part of the permanent collection of this museum in Vienna, one of the most important in Austria.
In 2025, this baroque architectural gem offers the opportunity to discover two exhibitions, split between its two main quarters, the upper Belvedere and the lower Belvedere, focusing on the work of the man who was undoubtedly the most eminent artist of Art Nouveau.

GOLD, COLOR, AND AI

The first exhibition, "Pigment & Pixel," sheds new light on the creative method and artistic practice of the Austrian painter. Curator Franz Smola invites us to rediscover his art through new technology, beginning with a hypothetical reconstruction of the colors in some of his paintings, representing his "allegories of philosophy, medicine, and jurisprudence."
Originally, these monumental canvases were commissioned for the ceiling of the Great Hall at the University of Vienna, but were destroyed in a fire at the end of World War II. Google Arts & Culture, in collaboration with the Belvedere, recreated their colors using artificial intelligence based on black and white photographs.

The exhibition also revisits his specific technique of applying gold leaf, with the emblematic Judith I (Judith and Holofernes) of 1901 as an example, imbued with eroticism, danger and sanctity, one of his first works to incorporate this safe haven value.

HIS LAST ALLEGORY

The second exhibition, “In-sight,” focuses on the history and influence of the unfinished allegorical work The Bride, painted between 1917 and 1918, before the artist’s unexpected and premature death. While it was initially owned by the most important woman in his life, Emilie Flöge (1874–1952), his muse and heir, it was later acquired by his first illegitimate son, Gustav Ucicky. Today, it belongs to the Klimt Foundation since 2013 and has been on loan to the Belvedere Museum since 2014.

In this exhibition, the curator highlights the famous photograph by Moriz Nähr, which captured The Bride and The Lady with a Fan in his last studio at the heart of his villa in Vienna's Hietzing district. This creative space becomes the central focus of the exhibition, evoking his important encounters and friendships, such as those with his contemporaries Egon Schiele and Felix Albrecht Harta, his patrons Eugenia Primavesi and Serena Lederer, and the connoisseur of Japanese art, Kijiro Ohta.

Also included are his pencil sketches which put the canvas into context and, most importantly, recently taken x-rays of the painting, the results of which will be on display from the opening.

“GUSTAV KLIMT – PIGMENT & PIXEL: REDISCOVERING ART THROUGH TECHNOLOGY”
LOWER BELVEDERE
RENNWEG 6, VIENNA (AUSTRIA)
FROM FEBRUARY 20 TO SEPTEMBER 7, 2025
BELVEDERE.AT

“IN-SIGHT: GUSTAV KLIMT. THE BRIDE »
UPPER BELVEDERE
PRINZ EUGEN-STRASSE 27, VIENNA (AUSTRIA)
FROM MAY 15 TO OCTOBER 5, 2025