Sketched Portrait - 1910s - Original Collotype Print by Gustav Klimt 1919

Sketched Portrait is a vintage, beautiful, and rare collotype from “Gustav Klimt: Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen”, a limited-edition collection of 25 monochrome and two-color collotypes after drawings by Gustav Klimt. Published by Gilhofer and Ranschburg, Vienna, July 1919, just one year after Klimt's death, with a sophisticated technique to perfectly reproduce Klimt's pencil strokes. Edition of 500 numbered prints, with the first group numbered I-X and the second numbered 11-500. This is a beautiful and rare plate representing a female portrait in profile, realized with a very swift and fluid line and with some color additions on some details. Signed on stone on the lower left margin. In excellent conditions, including an ivory-colored cardboard passepartout with a little rip on the lower margin at the center that we wanted to keep in its original state (cm 59.3 x 40). Original Title: Porträtskizze. The original pencil sketch is held at the Lederer Collection, in Vienna, together with the other original drawings of the portfolio. All the works were printed posthumously, one year after Klimt’s death, by the Kunstanstalt Max Jaffé, a Viennese specialist in fine art collotypes. The complex collotype printing process perfectly rendered Klimt’s remarkably spontaneous drawing style. This dichromate-based photographic process was invented in 1856. The gelatin plates required a very delicate preparation involving light exposure, washing, and drying. Collotype plates could not be re-used: the limited-edition prints from colloid ink were stable and they had no chance of fading like other photographic processes of the time. Later on, commercial lithography replaced this technique, which has now become nearly forgotten. The importance of this portfolio lies in the aesthetic achievement of capturing the variations of Klimt's style between 1898 and 1917. These drawings of women are suffused by a veil of sexuality, well-accepted by the Viennese society. Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen is erotic material that would circulate privately among Vienna's upper-class men. The emotional fluidity of Klimt’s erotic drawings created and still creates an intense psychological reaction in the viewer. Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen reveals the female world in Klimt's eyes. He meticulously observes both nubile young girls and craggy old women. His drawings demonstrate his unstoppable creative energy and his expertise in the technique. This artwork is shipped from Italy. Under existing legislation, any artwork in Italy created over 70 years ago by an artist who has died requires a licence for export regardless of the work’s market price. The shipping may require additional handling days to require the licence according to the final destination of the artwork.