The Kiss Canvas Wall Art by Gustav Klimt | iCanvas

Painted by Gustav Klimt between 1907 and 1908 at the height of his `golden period` - named as such for his liberal use of gold flake - `The Kiss` eloquently encapsulates the heady and decadence days of fin-de-siècle Vienna before the onset of World War I. Perfectly straddling the two centuries` artistic concerns, Klimt`s `The Kiss` is the bridging point between nineteenth century Symbolism and the headlong rush into twentieth-century modernity. As the leading figure of the influential Vienna Secession movement, Klimt successfully oversaw a period of aesthetic and technical upheaval wherein the rules of the Academy were turned on their head. The painter`s impassioned figures are presented as gilded objects of mutual luxury, frozen in an act of intense emotion. Their forms seem to stand as a rejection of any sense of romantic sentimentality - their love is purely physical, stripped bare of the prudence of the rapidly departing age of the uptight. Indicating a sense of total abandonment and impending pleasure, Klimt positions his viewers in a sense of awkward anticipation. Drawing on the rich characterization of Japanese woodblock printing, `The Kiss` is as much a work of design as it is a work of classical painting. It was this decorative dimension that gave life to the era of Art Nouveau in architecture, interior design, and painting, a style that embraced the decadent luxuries of the aspirational classes. Klimt gave to his era something rarely seen before: a sense of glamour and dizzy splendor that set the tone for the upcoming century of fashion.