Death and Life

Death and Life, begun around 1908 and reworked until around 1910–1911, is one of Klimt's most sustained meditations on mortality. The Leopold Museum in Vienna holds this major work, which Klimt exhibited at the International Art Exhibition in Rome in 1911 where it won first prize. The composition presents the figure of Death — skeletal, grinning, adorned with crosses and other symbols — standing to the left, while a group of interlocked living human figures occupies the right side in a swirl of warm, patterned drapery. The work belongs to a tradition of Totentanz imagery but transforms the medieval dance-of-death format: Death here is a passive observer, not a partner or pursuer, while the living figures are oblivious, wrapped in an embrace that speaks of erotic and familial intimacy rather than fear. Klimt reworked the background between initial exhibitions — photographs from 1908 show a different ground — suggesting sustained intellectual engagement with the theme. The work is closely related to Hope I and Hope II in its treatment of life's continuity across time, but Death and Life addresses the boundary between existence and its ending with greater directness. It stands alongside The Three Ages of Woman as a centrepiece of Klimt's allegorical production.

Oil on canvas with a compositional division between the single standing figure of Death on the left and the clustered living figures on the right. The Death figure is painted with flatter, harder-edged treatment and a cooler palette, while the living figures are rendered in warmer tones with Klimt's characteristic ornamental textile overlay. The background is a neutral mid-tone that separates the two groups without spatial definition.