1917, Gustav Klimt, Death and Life [Tod und Leben] (detail) -- Leopold Museum (Vienna)

From the museum label:

 

This large-scale painting, of which there existed an earlier ver-sion, addresses the human cycle of life. Klimt created first drafts on paper for this work as early as 1908 and began executing it in oil from 1910. Premiering the work, then called Death, at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome, Klimt won the gold medal. While the work was again shown at exhibitions in Dresden, Budapest, Mannheim, Prague and eventually in Berlin in 1916, it was curiously enough never exhibited in Vienna during the artist's lifetime. The first version of the painting is documented in a color collotype in the Miethke portfolio, in a color reproduction in a 1913 issue of the magazine Kunst für Alle as well as in a contemporary black-and-white photograph by Moriz Nähr from Klimt's estate. The current version was first shown at the Berlin Secession in 1916, with Klimt making last-minute changes to the work when it was already framed, leaving traces of paint on the original frame.

 

Klimt's allegory consists of the personification of death on the left side and the three-part cycle of life on the right side, made up of a mother and child, an elderly woman and a pair of lovers. The first version showed the solitary figure of death, shrouded in a cloak with blue ornaments, statically inclining its head, whereas in the final work it approaches life almost dynamically, raising a small red cudgel. The group of people on the other side, now grown to nine figures, is tightly packed into an oval ornament. Except for the squinting baby and the woman facing death directly with her open, glassy eyes, all the other figures appear to levitate in a dream-like state.

Done