Editing Gustav Klimt (section)

===''Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen - "Twenty-five Drawings"''===
''Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen'' ("Twenty-five Drawings") was released the year after Klimt's death. Many of the drawings in the collection were erotic in nature and just as polarizing as his painted works. Published in Vienna in 1919 by Gilhofer & Ranschburg, the edition of 500 features twenty-five monochrome and two-colour collotype reproductions, nearly indistinguishable from the original works. While the set was released a year after Klimt's death, some art historians suspect he was involved with production planning because of the meticulous nature of the printing (Klimt had overseen the production of the plates for ''Das Werk Gustav Klimts'', making sure each one was to his exact specifications, a level of quality carried through similarly in ''Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen''). The first ten editions also each contained an original Klimt drawing.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.1stdibs.co.uk/art/prints-works-on-paper/figurative-prints-works-on-paper/gustav-klimt-kk-hof-und-staatsdruckerei-ho-miethke-das-werk-folio-three-ages-woman-collotype-print/id-a_2051753/ |title=Gustav Klimts: Fünfundzwanzig Handzeichnungen |publisher=1stDibs |access-date=16 December 2019 | type=auction listing}}</ref>

Many of the works contained in this volume depict erotic scenes of nude women, some of whom are masturbating alone or are coupled in [[sapphic love|sapphic]] embraces.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Néret |first1=Gilles |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2rAASKPFnaoC&q=Gustav%2520Klimt%2C%2520lesbians&pg=PA47 |title=Gustav Klimt: 1862–1918  |date=2000 |publisher=Taschen |isbn=978-3-8228-5980-3 |language=en}}</ref>{{Sfn|Fliedl|1997|p=192}} When a number of the original drawings were exhibited to the public, at Galerie Miethke in 1910 and the International Exhibition of Prints and Drawings in Vienna in 1913, they were met by critics and viewers who were hostile towards Klimt's contemporary perspective. There was an audience for Klimt's erotic drawings, however, and fifteen of his drawings were selected by Viennese poet [[Franz Blei]] for his translation of Hellenistic satirist [[Lucian]]'s ''Dialogues of the Courtesans''. The book, limited to 450 copies, provided Klimt with the opportunity to show these more lurid depictions of women and avoided censorship thanks to an audience composed of a small group of (mostly male) affluent patrons.