Gustav Klimt's 'Water Serpents II' Resurfaces at Belvedere Museum

The Belvedere Museum in Vienna presents 'Klimt. Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse', curated by Markus Fellinger and running until May 29. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, features around 90 works comparing Klimt with his predecessors and contemporaries. A highlight is 'Water Serpents II', completed in 1907 during Klimt's golden period, which had been hidden from the public for decades. The painting was owned by Austrian collectors, confiscated by Nazis in 1938, then acquired by Gustav Ucicky, the artist's illegitimate son. It resurfaced in 2013 when Ucicky's widow sold it for $112 million to Russian oligarch Dmitri Rybolovlev, who sold it two years later. Now part of the HomeArt collection founded by Rosaline Wong in Hong Kong, the work is on public view at the Belvedere, which provided restoration expertise in exchange for insurance premiums.