From his earliest days in the 1880s to his death in 1918, Klimt produced thousands of individual works on paper. He never stopped drawing, and over 4000 pieces survive today. It’s likely that he produced many more, lost to the ravages of time and the efforts of his many cats (the critic Arthur Roessler recalled him saying that “It doesn’t matter if they crumple or tear a few sheets— they only piss on others, and don’t you know, that’s the best fixative.”)
During the course of his career, Klimt’s drawing style evolved considerably. By the early 20th century, his serene academic style had given way to an ethereal line that suggests the emotional presence of the subject while also emphasising the two-dimensionality of the artwork. This was exceptionally Modern. These drawings betray no hint of hesitation or difficulty; Klimt is guided by the pencil and follows wherever it takes him.
Only one folio set of prints was produced during Klimt’s lifetime. Das Werk Gustav Klimts featured fifty of the artist’s most important paintings and painstakingly reproduced them as collotypes. They were published by subscription in an edition of 300 between 1908 and 1914. The year after Klimt’s death, a second folio - Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen ("Twenty-five Drawings") – was published in an edition of 500. Although released posthumously, Klimt is suspected to have been involved due to the meticulous care taken with the printing. Very early on, collotype prints became the go-to medium for capturing the beauty and subtlety of Klimt’s drawings.
In 1922, our folio 50 Handzeichnungen was published in Vienna. Once again, the collotype printing process was used to create fifty stunningly beautiful prints of drawings that Klimt had produced between 1904 and 1918. Only 375 impressions of each image were made. Our fifty collotypes are from edition 138.
Collotype printing is a complex, labour-intensive process that has been almost entirely replaced by lithography. In modern digital and offset lithographic prints, a photographic image is broken down into groups of tiny dots laid down onto a printing plate to create the image. In collotype printing, a photographic image is burnt into a thin layer of gelatin, which is then coated in ink and printed. The ink seeps into the gelatin, allowing for microscopic levels of detail, producing a more sincere reproduction of the image. Collotype plates are extremely fragile and can’t be reused, so prints can only be made in small editions.
