ORIGINAL color
Legion of Honor hosts an exhibit of Klimt’s works, as well as reproductions of ancient statues painted in authentic colors
San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum in Lincoln Park, modeled on a French palace, always looks stately, and first-time visitors may assume it’s entirely formal and hush-hush inside, too.
But there are times — right now, for instance — when exhibits are vivid and blazing with color. One exhibit is a selection of paintings by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, full of swirling color, mosaic-like details and emotional power.
The second show reveals that ancient Greece and Rome weren’t a parade of whitemarble columns and statues. They were painted with vivid color, and if the Legion of Honor had been built then, it would have been, too.
There’s a backstory to each exhibit.
Gustav Klimt and French sculptor Auguste Rodin met in 1902, at an exhibit of the Vienna Secession movement, which Klimt helped establish with the motto, “To every time its art. To art its freedom.”
Rooted in the past they may have been, but Rodin and Klimt were key figures of modern art in their own era and admirers of each other’s works. Whatever they had to say to each other 115 years ago, they’re now engaged in what curators call “an artistic encounter” in galleries at the Legion of Honor.
This means that the Legion’s extensive collection of Rodin sculptures is joined by Klimt paintings, drawings and sketches rarely seen outside their home museums— and the homes of collectors. The Fine Arts Museums’ director, Max Hollein, said there is much demand for exhibits of Klimt’s works to mark the centennial of his death in 1918.
It’s a modest group of paintings — 14 altogether, three of them unfinished — along with reproductions of notable Klimt murals. Still, Hollein said, it’s the largest exhibit of Klimt works ever shown on the West Coast.