Hope II By Gustav Klimt

I visited the Museum of Modern Art on October 9th. It was a very rainy day, but the museum was very crowded. I had never been to a museum of this type before; I have never been really interested in “art”. While at the museum I was amazed to see how intricate the works of art were, even though I didn’t always understand what the work was meant to be or meant to explain I admired the work put into them. After walking around confused trying to decide which piece I would like to analyze, I found Hope II by Gustav Klimt. While reading the excerpt next to this painting I was surprised to learn that painting of pregnant women were considered to be rare. This painting caught my eye immediately and I knew I was going to write about it. The Austrian painter Gustav Klimt painted Hope II in 1907-08. It is painted from oil, gold, and platinum on canvas. I chose this painting to analyze because it depicted a sad pregnant woman; this made me question why she was sad. As I got a closer look I saw that there seemed to be a skeleton head coming out of her dress. The woman’s breast are also bare and visible, which I thought was strange, because the woman is not alone. There are three …show more content…
The woman in the painting is an expecting mother who is coming to the end of her pregnancy. I believe she is looking down at her stomach, which seems to have a skeleton baby head in it, hoping that everything goes well with her delivery. The women at her feet are in a kneeling position praying for the same thing. At first I thought this paining symbolized a still born baby, but with the title Hope II, I think it has more to do with an up and coming birth. Behind the pregnant woman is a yellowish white figure, which to me looks to be angel wings. To me this is symbolic of the fear that she can also die during childbirth, back then many mothers died during