Beethoven Frieze (1902)

Klimt painted his only true fresco, the Beethoven Frieze, for the 14th Secession exhibition in Vienna (1902). It was intended as part of the group's homage to the Leipzig artist Max Klinger, whose polychrome sculpture, the Beethoven Monument (Museum der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig), formed the centrepiece of the show.

The fresco occupies three walls of a room in the Secession Building. It was conceived as a pictorial paraphrase of the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony depicting the struggle for happiness undertaken by a knight in armour who, vanquishing the 'hostile powers', leads 'weak humanity' into the realm of the arts. The final section was identified by a quotation from Schiller's An die Freude ('Ode to joy'): 'Joy, fair spark of divinity, here's a kiss for all the world'.