La Mort et la Vie

Klimt brought this to oil in 1910, at the height of his fame in Vienna. On one side a column of figures sleeps and embraces, tangled together, ages of life from a baby to an old woman. On the other, a skeleton in a patterned robe watches them, holding a club. When it first showed in Rome in 1911 it won the gold medal, and yet Klimt kept picking at it. Around 1915 he scraped away the gold background that had been the signature of his earlier work and repainted it in this cold grey-blue, and he made Death more active, raising the club that had not been there before.