Liegender Halbakt nach rechts

The last decade of Klimt's oeuvre is dominated by drawings. Very spontaneous in execution, most can be seen as rapid sketches. They are autonomous works and most of them were not related to a particular painting. It is particularly interesting to see this revived interest for drawing since his original training was as a drawing teacher. Drawing occupied most of his time during his early years at The School of Art and Crafts, either as part of the course or in his first commissioned work negotiated for him by his teacher Michael Rieser. The post-1900 studio drawings are exclusively of the human body that record a certain posture or detail of movement and they illustrate Klimt's life obsession with the female figure and his erotic and sexual fixation. In 1908, the architect Adolf Loos publicly accused Klimt's art of erotic pollution. In his oil, Klimt proceeded to translate his fixation with sexuality into a latent sexual symbolism. His drawings however, which are more intimate and pictorial, allowed him to fully express more closely his research with his erotic obsession.