A new campaign celebrating the legacy of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt—one of whose paintings recently became the most expensive work of modern art ever sold at Sotheby’s—launches in Hong Kong
It wasn’t a Picasso, Monet or Warhol that set off a 19-minute bidding battle inside Sotheby’s New York’s Breuer Building last November. Rather, it was a mysterious and relatively little-known painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, one of the major figures of the late-19th-century art nouveau period, which had been hidden from public view for decades.
The two-metre-tall painting, Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914-16), depicting the 20-year-old daughter of two of the artist’s most committed patrons, fetched a jaw-dropping US$236.4 million—approximately HK$1.85 billion. This makes it the second priciest work of art ever to go under the hammer; the most expensive, Leonardo da Vinci’s oil painting Salvator Mundi, is surrounded by debate over whether or not the artist himself completed it.
Klimt has always been celebrated as a radical force in the modern art world; he broke away from the classical, naturalistic art and traditional themes promoted by Vienna’s art academies. He and several like-minded rebels formed the Vienna Secession movement in 1897, known for works that express structure and decoration through materials such as glass, iron and, in Klimt’s case, gold.
The historic auction put the artist at the forefront of the art market and study. In Hong Kong, Derek Collins, University of Hong Kong’s associate vice president for cultural and external affairs and director of the museum studies programme, is spearheading an initiative to further Klimt’s enduring legacy through The Kiss Legacy Project. This multi-faceted campaign, a collaboration between an international team based between Hong Kong, London and Vienna, is designed to expand global appreciation for Vienna’s Belvedere Museum collection while raising €15 million for a new visitor centre, which will begin construction in 2027. At its heart, the project seeks to connect modern audiences, particularly those in Hong Kong, to Klimt’s most iconic masterpiece, The Kiss.