Processing
"Retouch" category. Oil pictography on canvas with gold leaf border. Retouching with Maimeri, Winsor and Newton colors. Processing with magnifying glass. Hot chalk reliefs, gilding in 18 kt pure gold leaf. Canvas mounted on frame, gold leaf borders; concealed hook.
History
Klimt to give the work greater depth, plays with contrasts of tone and color along with a use of floral and geometric motifs. The man wears a gold tunic with black and white rectangles while the woman's robe features colored spirals and circles. The use of these complementary shapes on the robes of the two protagonists indicate opposite sexes and personalities that meet and complement each other in the moment of kissing. The life that blossoms around the protagonists, symbolized by the turf, and the physical and spiritual ecstasy transformed into golden clouds, are clues to a work that conveys the passion of falling in love at the moment when the two lovers become one body. If of the man we see only the profile and the nape of the neck, of the woman it is possible to admire the slender hands and the face with closed eyes, to express the transport of feeling. It is precisely through this choice of the painter that it is possible to understand how for Klimt it is the woman who is the pivotal point and how it is she who must communicate with the viewer. What transpires from the Viennese painter's canvas is not only passion but the work is capable of telling a loving feeling that has neither time nor boundaries.
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss