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Lot Essay
The present work is a preparatory drawing which relates to Klimt's renowned Wasserschlangen II of 1904-07 (N. and D. no. 140; fig. 2). Another work from this rhapsodic series is Liegender Akt mit verdecktem Gesicht (A. S. no. 1507), today housed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Women floating in or weaving through water is a recurring motif in Klimt's work after 1897 and, as Neda Bei notes, these works 'lend expression to the fantasy of being in the water. What we see, however, are bodies supported by a kind of ether or dense air; they hover or float in characteristic pictorial spaces, or rather non-spaces, in which plasticity and depth are largely dissolved in planes' (as quoted in exh. cat., Vienna, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Klimt's Women, Sept. 2000-Jan. 2001, p. 236).
Klimt's preparatory drawings, as seen in the present work, show that the artist used relaxed reclining nudes to study this state of immersion in water. They 'document an almost uninhibited visual drive, a clinical curiosity about human, and above all, female sexuality' (Ibid; see fig. 1).
Women floating in or weaving through water is a recurring motif in Klimt's work after 1897 and, as Neda Bei notes, these works 'lend expression to the fantasy of being in the water. What we see, however, are bodies supported by a kind of ether or dense air; they hover or float in characteristic pictorial spaces, or rather non-spaces, in which plasticity and depth are largely dissolved in planes' (as quoted in exh. cat., Vienna, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Klimt's Women, Sept. 2000-Jan. 2001, p. 236).
Klimt's preparatory drawings, as seen in the present work, show that the artist used relaxed reclining nudes to study this state of immersion in water. They 'document an almost uninhibited visual drive, a clinical curiosity about human, and above all, female sexuality' (Ibid; see fig. 1).