Life is a Struggle (Golden Rider)

We need to start this Saturday with an obvious statement:  Life is a Struggle.

It is not me being melancholic, however, but Gustav Klimt. On the canvas we see today, the knight in golden armor is pushing on regardless of the evil snake obstructing his way. Klimt was a bit bitter, when he painted today's knight; he began pursuing his own unique art practice after three paintings he was commissioned to produce for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as “pornographic.” The appearance of the knight, which references Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil, is an allusion to Klimt’s own circumstances at the time. Regarded as one of Klimt’s most important works, Life is a Struggle was once owned by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s father and was the first oil painting by Klimt to enter the collection of a public art museum in Japan.

P.S. Before Gustav Klimt developed his distinctive, ornamental style of painting, he created more conventional, yet still beautiful artworks. Discover Klimt's unknown portraits you would never guess were his.

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