0008

In Klimt’s late painting “Die Freundinnen II” (“The Girlfriends II”, 1916/17, burnt in 1945), two upright female figures nestling against each other are cut off below the centre of their bodies by the picture’s edge. The figure on the left appears youthful, naked, with an inquisitive gaze, a picture of vitality; her partner shows herself fully clothed and seems to represent a somewhat more mature, sophisticated type of woman.
The numerous drawings Klimt produced in the context of this late work between 1915 and 1917 largely revolve around the figure of the nude young woman and fall into two categories. The depiction of two standing nude figures shown here (cat.-no. 8) belongs to those drawings in which Klimt captures his models in groups of two or three. The combination of the woman who is depicted from the side and is turning her face towards the viewer and the frontal nude figure partly overlapped by her is faintly reminiscent of the position of the “Girlfriends” in the painting, although here there can be no question of a directly preparatory function. Klimt draws the outlines of the frontally shown, distinctly non-ideal body with often fiercely emphatic pencil strokes, markedly emphasising the bulges of the belly, buttocks and breasts as well as the accentuated angularity of the shoulder blade. It is impossible to miss the influence of Expressionism here. The stylised triangular eye is like a shorthand cypher, intensifying the expression together with the slightly open mouth. What preoccupies Klimt again and again in his multi-figure studies is the interaction between the rhythmically flowing, expressively contrasting body contours. One of the special features of these drawings is the way in which he pointedly juxtaposes the sexual characteristics of the posing models – in this case, the nipples and the areas of pubic hair.
(Marian Bisanz-Prakken, 2023)