Gustav Klimt - Woman in an armchair. Dame im fauteuil 1897-1898
Woman in an armchair. Dame im fauteuil 1897-1898
52x52cm oil/board
Sold for: USD 7.4 million
Auction house: Sotheby’s, New York
Sale date: 16 May 2017
Seller: Anonymous owner
Buyer: Anonymous buyer
From Sotheby’s, New York:
The Viennese Secession was founded the same year Dame im Fauteuil (Woman in an Armchair) was painted. A rebellion against the academic style which maintained primacy in Vienna, the Secession moved to shake the artistic institutions to their foundation: “We want to declare war on sterile routine, on rigid Byzantinism, on all forms of bad taste… Our Secession is not a fight of modern artists against old ones, but a fight for the advancement of artists as against hawkers who call themselves artists and yet have a commercial interest in hindering the flowering of art” wrote Hermann Bahr in the catalogue of the First Secession in 1898 (reproduced in G. Néret, Klimt 1862-1918, Cologne, 2005, p. 17). Founded in 1897 the Secession was led by Klimt as its president.