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s work.
Klimt started out as a decorator, opening a studio with his brother Ernst. Some of his most famous commissions were for murals, including the magnificent Beethoven Frieze, painted for the exhibition of Max Klinger&
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s statue of Beethoven, and the monumental ceiling paintings for the auditorium of Vienna University, which shocked a conservative public. A founder of Vienna Secession, the band of artists who resigned from the established art bodies to form their own group, Klimt became the principal painter of the Art Nouveau movement, painting glittering portraits of fashionable Viennese society as well as startling and erotic allegories.