Klimt Villa

From Summerhouse to Villa

In the heart of Hietzing, in a quiet residential district, a two-storey neo-baroque villa stands within extensive gardens. It is here, between 1911 and his death in 1918, that Gustav Klimt created some of his most significant works in a single storey summerhouse which he used as a studio. He worked here on more than 50 paintings, including world-famous pictures such as ‘Adele Bloch-Bauer II’, ‘Friederike Beer’, ‘The Bride’ and ‘Adam and Eve’. But the villa itself came after Klimt’s time. It wasn’t until a few years after the artist’s death that the owners of the summerhouse, the Hermann family, began work on extending the building. The result of these extensions was a neo-baroque villa, which was completed in 1923 by the now new owners, the Klein family. The renovations included the addition of a second floor with a flat roof, a porch on the south side, and an outside staircase on the north side. This means that Gustav Klimt never knew the villa as it stands today. However, this design created a unique room-within-a-room structure, inside which the studio space used by Gustav Klimt has been preserved to this day.

In 1939 the Klein family, an assimilated Jewish middle-class family, was forced to flee Austria to escape Nazi persecution. After the liberation of Austria in 1945, the villa and some of the land that had been stolen from the Klein family were restored to it by the Republic of Austria. However, the family did not return to Hietzing and so sold the villa back to the Austrian state in 1957. After many years being used as a school, the villa remained empty for a long period of time, the fact that it had once housed Gustav Klimt’s last ever studio almost forgotten.

The Klimt Villa today

With the threat of demolition hanging over it, and following a long-running citizens’ campaign, in 2012 this unique building was renovated and revitalised by the Republic of Austria to mark the Klimt Year. The Burghauptmannschaft Österreich and the Federal Monuments Office, the agencies responsible for Austria’s architectural heritage, took the decision to recreate the structure of the ground floor as it existed before the additions of 1922/23. This was carried out as part of the extensive and meticulous renovations.

The revitalisation resulted in a detailed reconstruction of Gustav Klimt’s reception room and studio space. Today these are the main features of the exhibition at the Klimt Villa. In order to help visitors understand the special history of this location and the unique house-within-a-house structure, all guests are offered a short introduction in person before being given the opportunity to explore the spaces for themselves.

The garden, which features in several paintings by Klimt, is currently undergoing partial reconstruction in order to give visitors to the Klimt Villa an impression of the sumptuous flower garden that once surrounded Gustav Klimt’s studio.

Klimt Skulptur

Die vom Maler und Bildhauer Erwin Kastner geschaffene Skulptur wurde im Jubiläumsjahr 2022 auf der Südseite der Klimt Villa aufgestellt. Die Skulptur zeigt den Malerfürsten Gustav Klimt als Skizze und wirft im Laufe des Sonnenstandes seinen Schatten an die Fassade der Klimt Villa.

Die "Klimt Villa-Rose"

Gustav Klimt war ein Gartenfreund. Herzstück seines Gartens und auf Klimts Gemälde zu bewundern sind Damaszener-Rosen, die auf dem Grundstück um etwa 1900 gepflanzt worden sind. Die sogenannte Klimt Villa-Rose ist von einem Wiener Gartenexperten nachgezüchtet worden, dabei wurden die Triebe, die er von zwei Mutterpflanzen entwendet hat auf Wildrosen veredelt. 22 Stöcke sind im Zuge der Teilrekonstruktion des Gartens bereits ausgesetzt worden.

Jährlich stehen einige dutzend Stück zum Verkauf, mit dem Erlös wird die weitere Rekonstruktion des Klimt-Gartens finanziert.

Bestellung Klimt Villa-Rose

Das Garten Café der Klimt Villa

An Schönwettertagen laden von Mai bis September Bistrotische im Schatten von herrlichen Kastanienbäumen im Garten der Klimt Villa zum Verweilen und zum Genuss von Kaffee und Kuchen ein. Das seit 2021 eröffnete Garten Café ist für Gäste während den Öffnungszeiten des Museums zugänglich und ermöglicht auch den Besuch des Gartens.

Nur bei Schönwetter, Mittwoch – Sonntag, sowie an Feiertagen 10 – 18 Uhr.

Exhibition

Klimt Lost

The permanent exhibition is on display in and around Klimt’s studio – the only exhibition to be housed in a place where he worked.

Especially in Vienna, but in fact all over the world, Klimt has come to seem ubiquitous. His art has become common property. What is forgotten is what has been lost in relation to his works and his life: stolen art, restored art, missing art, and countless stories about collectors, perpetrators and victims.

Klimt’s final studio can still be found within extensive gardens on the outskirts of Vienna. A single rosebush has survived here for all that time, nothing more. Klimt has been dead for over one hundred years. His collectors and patrons are also no longer alive. In many cases they were persecuted by the Nazis, robbed, driven into exile or murdered. Some of Klimt’s oeuvre was lost, burned or disappeared without trace. The rest no longer hangs in the salons of his collectors, but more often on the walls of museums. The everyday lives that were played out against the backdrop of his paintings are as lost to us now as the close, personal ties that once existed between owner and artwork.

The exhibition therefore asks questions about how to approach a loss that reaches far beyond the individual works of art. It also introduces a general public to some of the protagonists of both past and present day, and brings a new perspective to the lost Klimts.