An exhibition titled “The Women of Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka” has opened at the Belvedere Palace & Museum in Vienna, running from October 22, 2015 to February 28, 2016. The show examines how Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Oskar Kokoschka depicted women, highlighting the artists' obsessive focus on female subjects against the backdrop of Vienna's changing society and the early 20th-century revolution in gender politics and sexuality.
The exhibition matters because it contextualizes these iconic works within the era's emerging discussions of female autonomy, sexual psychology, and gender roles, offering a critical lens on how male artists portrayed women. By bringing together masterpieces from three major figures of Viennese modernism, the show invites viewers to reconsider historical representations of women and their relevance to contemporary debates about gender and art.