The Belvedere in Vienna has chosen for Valentine's Day to put 10,000 pieces of Klimt's masterpiece on sale in NFT. The pieces are sold for 1850 euros each.
"A digital declaration of love". This is how the Belvedere Palace Museum in Vienna named this operation. He is the first in Austria to enter the metaverse, the virtual world of NFTs which is already revolutionizing the current art market. A high-resolution digital copy of The Kiss by Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) has been split into a 100×100 grid, resulting in 10,000 inimitable individual pieces as NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Going on sale for Valentine's Day, romantic shoppers were able to celebrate love with a 1.8 by 1.8 cm square of the painting that perhaps represented it best. Sales reached 3.2 million euros at 8 a.m. Monday, February 14.
An emblematic painting in the history of art
The Kiss by Gustav Klimt is a painting made between 1908 and 1909. The oil on canvas is covered with gold leaf and is thus part of the Viennese Secession painter's golden cycle . Gustav Klimt's best-known masterpiece, it is also one of the most beautiful and iconic depictions of the kiss in art history.
Although February 14 has passed, the celebration of love continues. NFTs are still available for purchase at a unit price of 1,850 euros (including minting costs and VAT) or 0.65 Ethereum (excluding minting costs, including VAT) on thekiss.art . Pieces will be awarded to individual purchasers at random, once a week, every Friday.
Belvedere general manager Stella Rollig considers her “ first step into the metaverse
a tremendous achievement.” "The Belvedere of course aspires to be one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the digital world, and thus reach new audiences," she explains. "The widespread interest shown by media, multipliers and collectors worldwide confirms our decision to focus on NFTs at the right time and with the right project,” said Wolfgang Bergmann, CFO of the Vienna Museum.
These tokens for authenticating digital works on the blockchain have been a real phenomenon in the art world since 2020. Italian museums this month sold masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Amedeo Modigliani in NFTs.
0 Comments