Klimt's Studies for the Faculty Painting "Medicine"

In the Albertina Museum, the drawn studies for "Medicine" are a particular highlight. A completely new approach to the naked human body had already manifested itself in the artist's studies for "Philosophy". In the drawings for the painting "Medicine"—created in 1901 as a counterpart to "Philosophy"—Klimt further developed these newly discovered methods.

The faculty painting "Medicine" was first exhibited in the Secession in 1901. In analogy to the cycle of life in "Philosophy" the considerably enlarged "Suffering Humanity" group seems like a detail lifted from an endless, vertically drifting stream of naked creatures of various ages.

Sometimes he spent several years searching for the ideal solution to a particular figure, as is manifest in the group of drawings for the woman floating in space. Giving birth to a child in the painting, she symbolizes the persistence of mankind. 

In some of these studies Klimt experimented with a profile position.

The end result of this intensive search proves to be a perfect correlation between style and expression. The linearly stylized nude sensually projects outward and seems to vanish at the same time.

Klimt captured the male counterpart in 1896 with elastic contours.

In the study for the column-like, front-facing figure of Hygeia, Klimt emphasized the finely pleated garment and the magic of her simple, angled arm gesture.

Klimt's earliest dealings with the taboo theme of pregnancy are combined here with the depiction of an old man bent over in grief.

In the studies of wrestling men, he emphasized the geometrically interlaced shapes of their bodies.

With caution but also occasional unsparing realism, he models their bodies using fine hatching.

Their bodies and faces are partially modeled with white highlights.

The study of a seated male figure as seen from behind has a meditative, self-contained character. He used red chalk relatively frequently, perhaps in view of the dominant red in the painting.

A sheet with several small sketches shows the sensitive and accurate approach Klimt took to the portrayal of a sleeping baby.

An equally sensitive interpretation is seen in the rhythmic line study of the skeleton for the figure of death.

The motif of the nude male back can be observed in a number of other studies.

The broad repertoire of motifs in the faculty paintings "Philosophy" and "Medicine"—containing all the fundamentals of human existence from procreation to death—is something that Klimt continued to call back to both as a draftsman and a painter.