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A prime example of Klimt’s “golden phase”, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is the first of the artist’s masterpieces to feature in our superlative Klimt and his Women series. It was also the most expensive painting in the world when purchased for the Neue Galerie in New York at a price of $135 million in 2006.

Completed in 1907, the painting took longer than any of Klimt’s other works to finish and features the only model to be painted more than once by the Viennese master – the wife of wealthy industrialist and patron of the arts Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.

Ethereal and enigmatic, the portrait was created from oils and gold leaf, which is why it has been possible to reproduce it so magnificently on the reverse of this 50 euro gold coin. The elaborate Jugendstil ornamentation of the painting’s background provides an intricate contrast to the smoother relief of the subject’s head in the foreground. A handsome portrait of the artist himself is reproduced in profile on the coin’s obverse to similar effect.

Designed by Thomas Pesendorfer and Herbert Wahner.

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Few painters have succeeded in portraying the female form with such aplomb as Gustav Klimt. A case in point is The Expectation, which features in all its glory on the second in our stunning five-piece Klimt and his Women series of 50 euro gold coins celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Viennese master’s birth.

Clearly inspired by Egyptian art, The Expectation is a prime example of how Klimt found inspiration in the past yet succeeded in creating something completely modern and original. It also exemplifies Klimt‘s trademark swirling decorative designs, as does The Tree of Life on the coin‘s obverse.

Both pictures are mosaics from Klimt‘s famous frieze on the walls of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels. Commissioned by the wealthy Belgian banking family who owned the Palais, work on the Stoclet Frieze was actually undertaken by the Wiener Werkstätte, the ground-breaking Viennese modernist workshop of visual artists.

Designed by Thomas Pesendorfer and Mag. Helmut Andexlinger.

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Gustav Klimt did not just paint women, he revolutionised the world’s image of them. The third coin in our incomparable Klimt and his Women series, Judith II, in which the saviour of the Israelites is portrayed as a chilling femme fatale, shows this to magnificent effect.

Painted in 1909, the life-size portrait shows a gaunt and bushy-haired Judith looking to her right as she clutches the severed head of Holoferenes, an Assyrian general who was threatening to destroy her home city of Bethulia. Klimt’s customary swirling art nouveau ornamentation features on this side of the coin as well as on its obverse, which is graced with Nuda Veritasfrom Klimt’s golden phase.

Painted in 1889, the long-haired beauty holding a mirror shows artistic truth without compromise and is a perfect example of Klimt’s artistic vision. This was a vision that led the painter to co-found the Vienna Secession, the artistic movement that rejected the conservatism of the early 20^th-century Viennese art world.

Designed by Mag. Helmut Andexlinger and Herbert Wahner.

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Painted between 1900 and 1907 to decorate the ceiling of the assembly hall of the University of Vienna, Gustav Klimt’s Faculty Paintings were the Viennese master’s last public commission. Klimt’s critics believed they broke cultural taboos and pushed the boundaries of obscenity, but their sensual beauty is plain to see on Medicine, the fourth coin 
in our award-winning Klimt and his Women series.

Gustav Klimt was no stranger to controversy, but the outrage caused by his Faculty Paintings was even debated in the Austrian Parliament and became a political issue. The paintings were never actually used for their intended purpose as Klimt returned his fee and refused to deliver his artworks, which were eventually burnt by the Nazis at the end of the Second World War. A detail from Klimt’s Jurisprudence, in the form of the Eumenides, the Greek deities of vengeance, graces the coin’s obverse. Stylised snakes accentuate Klimt’s customary swirling patterns of the gorgon’s hair in the rectangular centre, while to the right stands the goddess of law. The reverse shows a detail from Medicine as Hygieia, daughter
 of the Greek god of medicine, with the Aesculapian snake wound around her arm and the cup of Lethe in her hand. The letter M, the fourth letter in the word “Klimt”, appears at the foot of the coin.

Designed by Thomas Pesendorfer and Herbert Wahner.

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Women may have dominated the work of Gustav Klimt, but his most famous painting also features a man. Many experts believe the man in The Kiss is Klimt himself and that the woman he is kissing is Emile Flöge, Klimt’s partner in real life. Whether or not that is the case, like the Mona Lisa in Paris, The Kiss still has the power to make people from all over the world flock to see it.

No other work of Klimt’s could provide a more fitting climax to the Austrian Mint’s Klimt and his Women series, which began in 2012 as a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Viennese master’s birth and is now drawing to a close.

Painted in 1908-09, The Kiss is on permanent display at the Belvedere palace and museum in Vienna. One of the world’s most iconic paintings, The Kiss opens up manifold associations of love, happiness and hope, yet it is Klimt’s 1902 portrait of Emilie Flöge which experts often consider his best portrait of a woman, and which forms the centre piece of the coin’s obverse. The artist himself was of the opinion that no painting could ever convey the charm of the real Emilie, who was the most important of the many women in Klimt’s life.

Designed by Thomas Pesendorfer and Herbert Wahner.