Klimt and his Women

Born the son of a gold engraver in Vienna in 1862, Gustav Klimt grew up during the boom years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when the city was undergoing the intense period of economic growth that made it one of the world’s hotbeds of creativity.

After attending the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, Klimt found himself among those commissioned to create decorations for the monumental buildings that still pepper the Austrian capital today.

Tiring of the conventions of interior design at the time, influenced by Symbolism he headed in a new artistic direction before finding fame as the co-founder and first president of the Vienna Secession, the artistic movement that rejected the prevailing conservatism in the Viennese art world at the end of the 19th century.

Always the subject of controversy, after more than 30 prolific years and equal amounts of success and criticism Klimt died following a stroke at the age of 55 in 1918. His reputation and popularity are, however, still in rude health almost a century later.

With the clear lines and wood grain common to much Jugendstil furniture, this superb wooden collector case makes the ideal home for your entire Klimt and his Women collection.

Lined with velvet, allowing you to both protect and present all five coins, it also contains two boxes in which to store the coins’ accompanying descriptive booklets and certificates of authenticity. A protective slipcase decorated with Klimt’s The Kiss, which appears on the fifth coin in the series, completes this worthy and practical accessory to the collection.

Gustav Klimt’s world was a world of women. From classical and allegorical to erotic and mythological, the ever-popular Austrian painter succeeded in portraying female beauty like few others, to the extent that his name is synonymous with the representation of the female form.

Klimt and his Women is an unforgettable five-coin series of miniature masterpieces celebrating the Viennese master’s unique vision of women. Each beautiful 50 euro solid gold coin in the series, all featuring a woman who moved Klimt, has been issued at the beginning of every year from 2012 to 2016. Some of these paintings may be among the most famous, coveted and valuable in the world today, but you no longer need to be a billionaire to start your very own Klimt collection.

Klimt’s artistic genius is reason enough to complete Klimt and his Women, but as a further incentive each of the five gold coins bears the letter K, L, I, M, or T, so that the complete series spells the word ‘KLIMT’.