Gustav Klimt gets immersive exhibit

Austrian artist receives Van Gogh treatment with art show opening Oct. 21

Gustav Klimt is the latest artist to join the world of the immersive art exhibition.

The works of the late-19thcentury Austrian artist will get the same digital broad-canvas treatment in Toronto as did Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh from Italian Massimiliano Siccardi, a former dancer turned visual artist, and his creative team.

Klimt, who was born in Baumgarten, Austria, in 1862, was part of a bohemian, avant-garde cultural movement in Vienna that included individuals like architect Otto Wagner, composer Gustav Mahler and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, according to the website artsy.net.

Lighthouse Immersive, the Toronto company behind both “Immersive Klimt: Revolution” and “Immersive Van Gogh,” describes the period as “the height of artistic revolution in Vienna that preceded the fall of an empire: pulsing with bombastic energy and the collision of the traditional and the modern.”

Klimt trained as an architectural painter, according to the Klimt Gallery, and began his professional career painting murals and ceilings in large public buildings. He is best known today for his “Golden Phase,” during which he produced paintings, often portraits of women, enhanced with gold leaf.

One of his most famous, “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” was sold at auction in 2006 for a then record price of $135 million.

“Immersive Klimt” will be a journey through his evolution as an artist, Lighthouse Immersive says, “from thousands of hand-drawn sketches through to works from the pinnacle of his ‘Golden Phase,’ including the majestic ‘Tree of Life’ and his most famous and storied work, ‘The Kiss.’ ”

As in “Immersive Van Gogh,” Klimt’s paintings (along with those of his contemporaries Egon Schiele and Koloman Moser), will be projected on the walls and floor of a warehousesized space that was once part of the Toronto Star’s printing plant, accompanied by a soundtrack by Luca Longobardi and what’s described as cuttingedge animation.

Corey Ross, co-founder of Lighthouse Immersive, said Siccardi and Longobardi “are a bit more playful in this show with how they animate Klimt’s work; the show has a really celebratory energy that will absolutely meet the moment in the fall as the city continues to come back to life.”

The Klimt production will be housed in a space adjacent to the van Gogh show at 1 Yonge St., which is also home to “Gogh by Car,” a drive-in version of “Immersive Van Gogh” that patrons can experience from their comfort of their cars.

“Immersive Van Gogh” has been a big success for Lighthouse Immersive despite premiering during the pandemic.

Versions have since opened in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and other U.S. cities.

Co-founder Svetlana Dvoretsky said other great artists will be featured in the future, noting that her company has a long-term contract with Siccardi.

“They (Siccardi and company) will be developing new content for us for the next decade and we will introduce the new content every six to eight months from this group,” she said. Tickets for “Immersive Klimt: Revolution” go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at immersiveklimt.com, with

the exhibition to open Oct. 21.