Farm Garden with Sunflowers

In his search for suitable motifs, Gustav Klimt repeatedly used a self-made square cardboard frame which helped him find the best possible detail from the landscapes around the Attersee, where the painter spent his summers. Due to the closeness of these landscape details, as in this painting of a flower garden, the landscape loses any sense of depth. The horizon and the sky are hidden. This allows Klimt to translate the spatial depth onto a two-dimensional picture surface, making the motifs appear as carefully elaborated flat patterns. Even his fellow painters noticed how similar this was to ornamental craft work. According to Viennese writer Hermann Bahr, German painter Max Liebermann stated that Viennese painting was not about paintings, but painted carpets. In the landscapes Gustav Klimt created in his later years, this characterization is applied to special effect.