On Lake Attersee

Light and the shadows of clouds reflected on gently rippling waves. The lake surface, scattered with countless planes of color, as if a mosaic.

A bold yet serene landscape painting, deliberately excluding the sky and surrounding scenery, capturing only the expressions of the water's surface onto a square canvas.

Yet, at the time this painting was created in 1900, the artist Klimt was in the midst of a storm of intense criticism.

He had been working on a monumental ceiling painting commissioned by the University of Vienna, but its overly avant-garde and explicit depiction caused a huge scandal, drawing fierce backlash from conservative critics and the public.

As if to escape the suffocating urban controversies, that summer he visited the shores of Lake Attersee for the first time. Donning a loose working robe and swaying in a boat, he peered at the water's surface through a self-made square viewfinder crafted from cut-out cardboard.

Not to meet anyone's expectations, but solely to satisfy his own heart and pursue his unique vision, this waterscape painting is astonishingly abstract and rich in color.

Perhaps it was the tranquility of the lakeside and the beauty of the shimmering water's surface that saved him, exhausted by the clamor of the world, and guided him towards new artistic expression.