The Kiss, c.1907/08 Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of Gustav Klimt also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 10-12 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Kiss is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

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The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

The figures occupy a vertiginous threshold between material ground and immaterial shimmer - a man bends from the upper left, cradling the upturned face of his partner, their bodies enveloped by a single cascading cloak of gold. The woman, kneeling on a lip of meadow abundant with miniature blossoms, surrenders to the embrace, her eyelids drawn inwards, hands folded against his. Only the subtle protrusion of a bare foot confirms her gravity, while the man’s darker hair circles forward, anchoring the composition’s apex. Around them, a muted, particulate gold atmosphere suppresses all horizon, so that the lovers seem suspended in an eternal present.

Klimt arranges colour as a grammar of intimacy. Gold, at once luxurious and hieratic, dominates - interleaved with assertive rectangles of onyx, ivory and aluminium-like silver in the male garment, and a counter-rhythm of concentric crimson, cobalt and rose in the female. These chromatic flashes pulse like heartbeats against the metallic field, releasing the eye from monotony and suggesting the private complexity beneath the shared surface. Flesh is rendered with unexpected coolness, faint lilac shadows tempering warmth, so that skin appears both living and otherworldly. The meadow’s scattering of violets, pinks and greens introduces a natural register, yet its density of pointillist dots reiterates the decorative logic of the robes.

Technically, the painting is a dialogue between oil and precious metal leaf. Klimt lays the gold in broad sheets, then incises and over-paints, achieving a surface that oscillates from matte to dazzling. Brushwork is largely effaced beneath this gilded veneer; where paint remains visible, strokes are deliberate, modelling hands and faces with supple economy. The coexistence of flat pattern and subtle modelling forces the viewer to negotiate between optical seduction and tactile presence.

Compositionally, a shimmering rectangle encloses the couple, its verticality countered by the sweeping curve of the woman’s body. Geometric blocks on the male side yield to spirals and circles on the female - an eloquent visual metaphor for complementary energies. The sliver of meadow forms a chromatic plinth, tilting the whole tableau forward, while the void of gold behind them absorbs depth, guiding the gaze repeatedly back to the lovers’ interlocked profiles.

Painted in 1907-08 during Vienna’s charged fin-de-siècle, the work synthesises Byzantine mosaic opulence with the flatness championed by the Secession. It speaks to anxieties of modernity - the search for transcendence within sensuous experience - while its purchase by the Ministry of Art affirmed a new official acceptance of avant-garde aesthetics. Today, the panel remains a luminous testament to a moment when ornament, eroticism and spiritual longing briefly converged.