Death and Life by Gustav Klimt: meaning, revision and image rights

Artwork rights verdict

Death and Life: checked, with limits

Last reviewed10 August 2026

The artwork has a supported public-domain record in the EU and US; the recorded Google Art Project/Commons file is checked independently.

01

The artwork

The historical composition and Klimt’s authorship are the copyright-term question.

02

This image file

The scan, photograph, download terms and any later edits require their own record.

Jurisdiction checks

European Union — economic copyrightpublic-domain term

Directive 2006/116/EC applies life plus 70 years, calculated from 1 January after the relevant event. Klimt died in 1918, so the standard term ended before 1 January 1989. National moral-rights rules remain separate.

United States — this work recordsupported public-domain record

The Leopold Museum confirms the work’s first presentation at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome. The exact Commons record identifies it as published before 1931 and public domain in the US. Because exhibition and publication are distinct legal concepts, the file statement remains part of the evidence rather than being replaced by the exhibition date.

Digital reproduction fileseparate checks remain

The artwork term does not grant permission to every scan. Use only the exact source-file record below; site terms, contract limits, trademarks and privacy can still matter.

Source file record

One exact file, not a blanket permission

Open source record ↗

Upstream

Wikimedia Commons file sourced from Google Art Project; Leopold Museum object LM 630

Upstream SHA-1

0dff564fc5f7a698869e0f6618de0695299702d0

GeMarkt derivative

/blog/art-history/klimt-death-and-life.webp

Derivative SHA-256

8e5a48a08f2c00175f9e5a8aa9675c307ceaea61f3b90d72045d774283417362

Dimensions

1800 × 1567 pixels

Rights statement

Public Domain Mark; faithful two-dimensional reproduction

Transformation

Resized to 1,800 pixels wide and converted to WebP; no crop.

Use guidance: Use the linked Commons record for this file. A later museum photograph, detail, colour edit or exhibition press asset needs its own terms check.

Practical use

• Study and reproduce the historical composition using the exact recorded file.
• Describe the 1910 painting and Klimt’s 1915 revision as separate stages.
• Do not transfer this file verdict to unrelated museum photography or edited derivatives.

Evidence opened in this review

1. Leopold Museum object and exhibition record (object)
2. Museo di Roma: Austrian pavilion in 1911 (publication)
3. Exact Wikimedia Commons file record (file)

General information, not legal advice. Re-check the source record and the law where you will use the file.

Object record

Gustav Klimt began Death and Life in 1910 and substantially revised it in 1915. The oil painting is now in the Leopold Museum, Vienna, inventory LM 630. The museum’s object record describes it as a central allegory and confirms that the first version received a gold medal when presented at the 1911 International Art Exhibition in Rome.

The date is therefore best written as a span, not a single completion year. “1910/15” preserves the fact that the painting visible today is also a record of Klimt returning to an earlier solution.

A close look

Death stands alone at the left, covered by a robe of crosses. Life is not one opposing figure but a compact, interlaced group: infant, lovers, older body, closed eyes, exposed limbs and patterned cloth. The contrast is numerical as well as visual — one narrow vertical presence faces a crowded, rounded mass.

The space between them matters. It is a wide grey-green interval, crossed by Death’s gaze and raised club but not physically bridged. The living group seems to sleep or turn inward. No one looks back. Klimt makes mortality present without staging a battle.

Patterns distinguish bodies and bind them together at once. Flowers, circles and colour blocks pass across separate figures until the cluster reads like a single organism. Death’s garment uses a stricter repeat of cross forms. Ornament is the structure of the allegory, not an accessory applied after it.

A painting with two dates

The first version used a gold background. In the 1915 revision Klimt replaced that field with the cooler ground visible now and altered the figures. The change reduces the sacred shimmer familiar from the Golden Phase and increases the distance between the two sides.

Knowing that sequence prevents a common mistake: treating every feature as the expression of one moment in 1910. The work had already been exhibited and awarded before Klimt revised it. Its object history includes both states, while any reproduction must identify which state or photograph it carries.

Exhibition and rights evidence

The Leopold Museum and the Museo di Roma’s account of the 1911 Austrian pavilion establish the early presentation. Exhibition is not automatically legal publication under older US law, so the rights panel does not use that fact alone. It also records the exact Commons file’s statement that the work was published before 1931 and is public domain in the United States.

For the local derivative, the source is the named Google Art Project/Commons file. Its checksum and no-crop conversion are recorded above. That finding does not cover a Leopold Museum press photograph, a detail image or another colour-edited scan.

Where to go next

Read the Klimt rights guide for the legal framework and the pilot holds. The Klimt collection is the print-shopping route; the free Death and Life wallpaper is a separate personal-use download.