NEW YORK, NY.- Christie's New York announced that Litzlbergkeller, one of Gustav Klimt's finest landscape paintings, will lead New York's 20/21 Fall Marquee Week. The masterpiece will be in the premier auction of the season, the 20th Century Evening Sale, taking place on November 17, just days after the highly anticipated reopening of the Neue Galerie. In the same private collection for nearly three decades, Litzlbergkeller previously set a world record for Klimt when last at auction in May 1997 in the estate sale of Neue Galerie co-founder Serge Sabarasky. The work will be on view at Christie's Hong Kong from October 27-29 prior to exhibition at Rockefeller Center from November 7.

Giovanna Bertazzoni, Chairman of Christie's Europe: “We are honoured to be trusted with the sale of Litzlbergkeller in our momentous auctions in November. This landscape reads like a lyrical composition in three stanze – the forest with majestic, whispering oak trees; the house embraced by their foliage; the shimmering reflection in the lake. A shot of soothing potion in our veins, like the Mermaids' song: the mission delivered by the best works of art to the most passionate collectors. Inestimable.”

Max Carter, Global Chairman of 20th and 21st Century Art, Christie's: “The inn of Litzlbergkeller sits at the water's edge, between Klimt's allover technique and abstraction, form and dissolution, prewar certainties and the unknown. Our 20th Century Evening Sale was created six years ago to reflect and celebrate the range and curiosity of collectors across categories—and to span the great divides of hinge masterpieces like Litzlbergkeller.”

From 1900 through the end of his life in 1918, Klimt spent most of his summers in the Austrian countryside on the shores of Lake Attersee. The present work depicts a scenic view on the lake, centered around the Litzlberg Cellar—a brewery and inn on the north shore where Klimt had formerly stayed during his first several summers in the area from 1900-1907. Painted a decade later, after the artist had relocated to accommodations in a cottage on the lake's southern shore, the scene reflects on the past.

Composing the painting from across the lakeshore with the use of a telescope and postcard images, Klimt renders the building, grassy knoll and trees in his typically flattened style—crisp, interwoven planes in varying green jewel tones laid out with tapestry-like application, all over the canvas. The foreground presents a sharp departure, a semi-abstracted mirroring of the landscape above. Intriguingly, Klimt eliminates any signs of seasonal bustle around the popular inn. Instead, the painting is a calm, contemplative vision with all traces of human activity erased—an idealized reflection of the quiet serenity of his Lake Attersee summers.

Unlike the commissioned portraiture which won Klimt acclaim in Vienna, the vast majority of landscapes within his oeuvre were deeply personal, often inspired by his yearly escapes to Attersee, where he was free to experiment artistically and explore new techniques without the pressure of designing to a patron's taste. Litzlbergkeller is a rare hybrid, a picture motivated both by his own creative vision as well as a commission, by notable patron Otto Primavesi. Klimt painted the work over the course of nearly a year, starting in the summer of 1915, but not finishing until nearly a year later in May 1916 at his studio in Vienna.

The patron and first owner of the work, Otto Primavesi was a banker and entrepreneur from Olmütz, and along with his wife Eugenia, was an active champion of art, literature, music and theatre. The couple were among Klimt's most important patrons during this era, beginning with the commission of two family portraits in 1912. The following decade, several of their works, including Litzlbergkeller entered the possession of the Austrian photographer and anthropologist, Hugo Bernatzik. The work remained with him until it was acquired by Kurt Wieser in the early 1930s, then subsequently entered the collection of renowned gallerist, connoisseur and collector, Serge Sabarsky.

A crucial figure in the promotion of Klimt throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, Sabarsky curated the first show in Japan dedicated to Klimt's work in 1981, and later co-founded the Neue Galerie. Litzlbergkeller was acquired by the family of the present owner from Sabarsky's estate sale in May 1997—setting a record price for Klimt's work. A jewel within the esteemed private collection, the work has been on long-term loan at Vienna's Leopold Museum for the past several years.