Arty Farty Friday ~ Woman in Gold

One evening this week, via Netflix, we watchedWoman in Gold, a 2015 British-American film, the true story of Maria Altmann, an elderly Jewish refugee living in Cheviot Hills, Los Angeles, who, together with her young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg, fought the government of Austria for almost a decade to reclaim Gustav Klimt's iconic painting of her aunt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, stolen from her relatives by the Nazis in Vienna just prior to World War II. Altmann took her legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled on the case Republic of Austria v. Altmann (2004).

It's an engaging true story, with Helen Mirren playing the part of Maria Altmann - superb performance too!

This is the painting to which the movie refers - online images of it do it no justice at all. Klimt used gold leaf in its production, so in real life it must shimmer and shine.

As for Gustav Klimt - I wrote a blog post on him 10 years ago - it'd benefit from a re-do, but, for now a link to it must suffice: The Sensuality of Gustav Klimt