100 Drawings

Rating:
Summary: The simplistic beauty of a continual line
Review: Gustav Klimt is amazing. I love his work and I have most recently become more intrigued by his ideas and sketches. If you like Klimt, check out Auguste Rodin, and Egon Schiele also. They all have similar sketch stylizes and imagery. I am an art major and I specialize in painting portraits, so Klimt's sketches are a natural way for me to go. I love his work so I loved this book but as another reviewer stated, the images were too light. The drawings were awfully faint and on gray paper, I would have liked them to be printed darker or at least on white paper. Also there were a lot of his major sketches for his masterpieces missing that I've found in other books. Over all it's a very good book for a nice price.

Rating:
Summary: A Great View of Klimt's Intuition
Review: These 100 drawings are essential for any student of Klimt's work. Given that many times it is this stage of his work that is under-represented in books on his art, this book is advantageous. I've been looking at Klimt for years, and many times I've marveled at his intuitive, initial marks; they are records of a man obsessed with obervational drawing. The drawings in this book, rarely seen, are great examples of the first and most direct marks he would use and they attest to his amazing skill. They shed light on the finished works while standing nicely on their own. Even though the works shown here represent only a minute fraction of his drawings (thousands littered his studios at any given time), these particular pieces provide a unique view of this controversial artist. A good purchase.

Rating:
Summary: ga ga for gustav
Review: this is an amazing book! as an amateur graphic artist, this has been an invaluable reference and inspiration to me. all of the drawings are of figures, mostly women, mostly naked. they were largely done without direction to his models while they lounged around his loft so they are very intimate, sensual, and sometimes erotic.
his style is so lucid, i can stare at the images forever. the line is so smooth and light(usually pencil, sometimes charcoal), that the images seem like stencils. the body is basically a contour drawing and then the hair is captured in typical art nouveau style, with stylized strands moving in one direction.
i can't say enough about this book. the work is so simple and stunning...when i try to relate what it means to me, i can't think of a thing to say.

Rating:
Summary: A piece of paper, a pencil and a woman lying in bed
Review: What more is there to it? Maybe that's all art's good for: giving you a hard time. I thought the reproductions in this book were a little faded and that's why i gave it four stars and not five, as the drawings deserved. Also, i did not found some drawings i was sure to find here. Great if you want an introduction to Klimt, the explicit erotic artist.