Approaching Thunderstorm 1903

Gustav Klimt made 'Approaching Thunderstorm' with oil on canvas and it feels like he was really working through something, stroke by stroke. Look at how he’s built up the image. The texture is so dense, like he’s trying to capture the weight of the impending storm itself. The tree to the right is a mass of dabs and dashes, it almost vibrates, while the sky churns with a similar energy. The paint isn’t applied to give the illusion of something, but rather to become something in itself. I keep thinking about the tension between representation and abstraction here, something you also see in the work of artists like Van Gogh or Monet. Like them, Klimt seems to be exploring the edge where the observed world breaks down into pure feeling and form, an ongoing conversation about art as a process of transformation. It’s a place of ambiguity, where meaning is always in motion.