Gustav Klimt and Medicine: The Flow of Life

By Tobias G. Natter, Christiane Druml and Markus Müller

Taking Klimt’s lost painting Medicine as a starting point, this authoritative volume examines the relationship between art, medicine, and modern thought in Vienna around 1900.

When Gustav Klimt unveiled Medicine in 1901, the work sparked outrage by challenging conventional ideas about science, progress, and the human condition, becoming one of the defining cultural controversies of its time. Withdrawn by the artist and destroyed during World War II, Medicine remains one of the most fascinating lost masterpieces of modern art. 

Through paintings, drawings, archival photographs, and restored imagery, this volume reconstructs the history, meaning, and legacy of the work while placing it within the intellectual ferment of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Essays explore the connections between art, anatomy, psychology, philosophy, evolutionary theory, and modern medical science.

Leading scholars reveal Klimt’s engagement with the ideas reshaping his era, in particular microscopical cell examination, Darwinian concepts of human evolution, and the discovery of the unconscious. Reproductions of related masterpieces highlight the themes of birth and death, sexuality, consciousness and transformation.

• Documents in unprecedented detail the impact of Gustav Klimt’s painting, Medicine.
• Authors are experts in the field of art history, and on medicine and cultural studies
• Sheds light on the creative milieu of the time as well as Klimt’s allegories of life
• Richly illustrated with Klimt’s artworks, essays are interspersed with plate sections
• Ideal for readers interested in the intersections of art, medicine, and philosophy

Essential reading for Klimt enthusiasts, this volume is a compelling new perspective on Klimt’s lost masterpiece and its enduring relevance.

Hardcover
240 pages
Prestel, 2026
9.5 x 11.5 inches
ISBN 9783819500145
Monographs