Requiem

It appears that, during the last decade of his life, the artist increasingly turned inward in an attempt to unravel his multiple personal entanglements, particularly his relationships with various models. Consequently, following the execution of The Kiss , Klimt produced three figurative paintings— Death and Life , The Virgin , and The Bride —that share certain common elements and explore some of these personal issues. Klimt's preoccupation with his own mortality and legacy likely guided his hand in these multi-figural compositions, in which he gathered humans in distinct groups, giving the impression that they are confined within rock-like formations floating in the ether. In particular, Klimt repeatedly utilized negative space, which he masterfully converted from the unidentified darkness present in Portrait of Sonja Knips and other works, to an elevated void, imbuing it with a cosmic dimension. By consistently employing an analogous compositional structure in these late canvases, Klimt explicitly alluded to a sense of interconnectedness and continuity. The chapter argues that these paintings constitute a series and were partially shaped by Shinto, shunga , as well as other previously overlooked sources.