SUMMER NIGHTS

In August, the iconic work of Gustav Klimt comes back to life during 'Fabrique des Lumières Summer Nights'. Step into a new world this summer! 

Gustav Klimt, Gold in Motion

To mark its opening one year ago, Fabrique des Lumières introduced an immersive exhibition devoted to the main figures in the Viennese art scene, of which Gustav Klimt was a key figure. This summer only, (re)discover the renowned artist’s masterpieces, along with those of other iconic figures of the era at Fabrique des Lumières!

In late nineteenth century Imperial Vienna, Gustav Klimt was one of the principal decorative painters of the sumptuous monuments on the Ringstrasse. At the dawn of the new century, he led the Vienna Secession, a movement that sought to break away from academic art. Both famous and contested, Klimt paved the way to modern painting. The gold and decorative patterns that characterise his works are a symbol of this artistic revolution. The immersive exhibition includes the works that characterise Klimt’s work and made him so famous—his ‘golden phase’, portraits, and landscapes. The immersive exhibition also presents works by major Viennese artists, such as Egon Schiele, who were influenced by Klimt’s work. 

This artistic programme invites visitors to immerse themselves in the colourful and luminous works of Gustav Klimt, works by his contemporaries, and those whom he inspired. Taking visitors on a journey through one hundred years of Viennese painting, the immersive exhibition takes an original look at the works of Klimt and his successors through a presentation of the portraits, landscapes, nudes, colours, and gilding that revolutionised Viennese painting at the end of the nineteenth century and in the century that followed. 

Hundertwasser, In the wake of the Vienna Secession

Directly after the exhibition ‘Gustav Klimt, Gold in Motion’, discover the work of Viennese artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928 – 2000).

A painter and architect, he was the inheritor of the Vienna Secession, several decades later. He embodied an artistic revival, which was heavily influenced by the revolution instigated by Klimt. His paintings and architectural work, which are firmly rooted in a respect for nature and man, embody the source of life and the elements. Like Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, the artist abandoned perspective, using instead a succession of layers, and, like them, he preferred more expressive lines to the straight line, creating irregular forms. He stated that: ‘The straight line is a man-made danger because it is completely alien to mankind, to life, to all creation’.

Hundertwasser’s painting is an explosion of colour that embodies the very source of life and the natural elements, in an endless spiral. The artist’s ideal city gradually emerges on the Fabrique’s monumental surfaces, in a large dynamic fresco that takes shape, composed of forms and colours that appear to the rhythm of the music. Wandering around the area within the Fabrique, the visitors enter the scene and become part of the work itself through their presence.

Listen to the playlist of the exhibition