With a debut back in 2012, the Austrian Mint embarked on a five-piece set of coins to be released one-per-year, featuring Gustav Klimt’s paintings, specifically from a particular phase of his career when women were the focus of his attention, called his “golden phase”.

Titled Klimt and his Women, the 10g proof-finish coins have won multiple awards for their superb implementation. The second coin in the series, The Expectation, won the 2015 Krause Publications coin of the year award, and the third coin, Judith II, just won the 2016 Most Artistic Coin award.

Struck in Proof quality with a maximum mintage of 30,000, each coin comes in a case complete with a numbered certificate of authenticity. A superb wooden presentation case is also available at €66 for those keen to complete the entire five-coin Klimt and his Women collection. This coin is designed by Mag. Helmut Andexlinger and Thomas Pesendorfer, and is shipping from the 13th April 2016 for €484.00 That’s a rise from last years €450.00, which was itself up from €405.00 for the third coin, but down from the first two coins at €505.00 and €510.00. The joys of a moving commodity price…

The Kiss (Lovers) was painted by the Klimt between 1907 and 1908, the highpoint of his “Golden Period”, when he painted a number of works in a similar gilded style. A perfect square, the canvas depicts a couple embracing, their bodies entwined in elaborate robes decorated in a style influenced by both linear constructs of the contemporary Art Nouveau style and the organic forms of the earlier Arts and Crafts movement. The work is composed of oil paint with applied layers of gold leaf, an aspect that gives it its strikingly modern, yet evocative appearance. The painting is now in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum in the Belvedere palace, Vienna, and is widely considered a masterpiece of the early modern period. It is a symbol of Vienna Jugendstil—Viennese Art Nouveau—and is considered Klimt’s most popular work.

MINTS DESCRIPTION

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.

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