Portrait Friederike Maria Beer ~ Gustav Klimt Klimt Symbolism Art Nouveau Painter Portrait Friederike Maria Beer ~ Gustav Klimt Klimt Symbolism Art Nouveau Painter Gustav Klimt 1862 ~ 1918) an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt's work is distinguished by the elegant gold or coloured decoration, often of a phallic shape that conceals the more erotic positions of the drawings upon which many of his paintings are based. This can be seen in Judith I, and in The Kiss, and especially in Danaë. One of the most common themes Klimt used was that of the dominant woman, the femme fatale.