Featured Book and Movie: The Lady in Gold

Sara Trucksess

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I 1907 Gustav Klimt

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O’Connor spins the story of the Austrian Bloch-Bauer family’s darkest wartime days into a detailed historical narrative journeying from Klimt’s glorious, gilded Vienna of the early 1930s to modern day sunny Los Angeles. O’Connor’s extensive historical and first-person research has allowed her to skillfully portray the Nazi occupation of Austria during World War II as an attack not only on Jewish citizens and culture, but also on Viennese art itself, to which Austria’s cultured, influential Jewish elite, including Adele Bloch-Bauer, were intrinsically tied as subjects, muses and unfailing patrons. While some were able to use their vast wealth and cultural influence as bargaining chips for their safety and survival, most of these Jewish collectors and patrons had to watch as their beloved art was st…