Gustav Klimt:
Two male nudes. Study for The Athletes (Zwei Männerakte. Studie zu Athleten), circa 1904/05
Blue pencil on paper
56 × 37.2 cm
Auctioned at Dorotheum, Vienna, in 2025, for EUR 104,000 (Strobl s1520)

This powerful sheet belongs to the moment when Klimt, already deep into his mature period, returned with renewed intensity to the male body as a subject in its own right. The blue pencil gives the drawing a cool, almost sculptural clarity, allowing the figures to emerge with a kind of tensile calm that heightens the sense of physical presence. The two men face one another in a poised, almost ritual stillness, their bodies caught between readiness and reflection. Even before one reads the scholarship, the drawing radiates that mixture of strength and inwardness that Klimt could summon so instinctively when working from life. At this moment in his career, Klimt often turned to male models in the studio as a counterbalance to the elaborate, gold‑laden commissions that occupied him, and these sheets carry the freshness of that private, almost meditative practice.

The auction note by ms. M. Bisanz‑Prakken gives the drawing its essential art‑historical framing. She recalls that although Klimt is celebrated today for his depictions of women, his artistic formation at the Kunstgewerbeschule was shaped almost entirely by male models. His early nude studies reveal a remarkable sensitivity to the anatomy of athletic bodies, capturing their contours and surfaces with both precision and nuance. Klimt’s preference for strong, athletic sitters — with whom he sometimes even wrestled — remained a thread throughout his life. In major allegories such as Philosophy (1900–07) and Medicine (1901–07), muscular male figures appear as creators, guardians, or fighters, embodiments of force and responsibility.

Bisanz‑Prakken situates this sheet within the group of “Studies of Athletes” dated by Alice Strobl to around 1904–05. These works are not preparatory for any known painting but form Klimt’s most extensive engagement with the male body as an independent theme. The athletes appear either alone or, as here, in dynamic pairs. The use of blue chalk is characteristic of this creative phase, as is Klimt’s ambition to fuse the entwined bodies into a single, monumental expression of male strength. He orchestrates the taut outlines and rhythmic interplay of limbs with a clarity that echoes ancient Greek vase painting — a visual language he admired for its heroic restraint.

One of the most striking elements, as Bisanz‑Prakken notes, is the contrast between the front figure’s powerful musculature and the introspective tilt of his lowered head. This Klimt‑typical fusion of outward heroism and quiet melancholy gives the drawing its emotional depth. The bodies may be athletic, but the mood is contemplative; the strength is real, yet softened by a moment of inwardness that feels unmistakably human. In this tension — so precisely articulated by Bisanz‑Prakken — lies the particular beauty of the sheet.