The Kiss (original Der Kuss) was painted by Gustav Klimt, and is probably his most famous work. He began work on it in 1907 and it is the highpoint of his so-called 'Golden Period'. It depicts a couple, in various shades of gold and symbols, sharing a kiss against a bronze background. Between 1906 and 1909 Gustav Klimit painting and Austrian graphic designer Symbolist and representative of te Art nouveau Viennese seeks another expressivity for his works. He takes as a starting point the symbolism and the Japanese prints. Art must have a new definition in the company and this research is expressed here with the kiss. Its art is made of modernity and a very close relationship with the erotism.

The Artist seeks to give a dimension almost crowned to his fabric. It is about the topic of the pressure in love. A couple is intertwined on a floor of flowers resembling a meadow, it is wrapped in a full gilded clothing. The decoration of this cape, with the image of a mosaic, varies according to the sex: black and white rectangles for the man, of the coloured circles and the flowers for the woman. Of this emergent unit heads and the hands which constitute the expression of a great intimacy. The knelt woman gives herself to her companion the closed eyes and lets herself go to passion love.

Just as Munch can be associated with both Symbolism and Expressionism painting, so the art of the Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), is a curious and elegant synthesis of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. The Austrians responded enthusiastically to the decorative artifice of Art Nouveau, and Klimt is almost artifice incarnate. He painted large ornamental friezes of allegorical scenes, and produced fashionable portraits, uniting the stylized shapes and unnatural colors of Symbolism with his own essentially harmonious concept of beauty. The Kiss painting is a fascinating icon of the loss of self that lovers experience. Only the faces and hands of this couple are visible; all the rest is great swirl of gold, studded with colored rectangles as if to express visually the emotional and physical explosion of erotic love.

When he painted The Kiss Klimt was 45 and still lived at home with his mother and two unmarried sisters - but behind the respectable facade he was a man with a ferocious sexual appetite. Klimt fathered at least three illegitimate children and probably many more. He was obsessed by women and he had a fixation with redheads. It is no surprise that the woman in The Kiss has red hair. According to writer Frank Whitford: "Together the man and the woman form the shape of a penis and I think that is intentional - it's about sex and about the fulfillment of sex between a man and a woman." Two figures are situated at the edge of a flowered escarpment. The man is wearing neutral colored rectangles and a crown of vines; the woman wears brightly colored tangent circles and flowers in her hair. The couple’s embrace is enveloped by triangular vining and a veil of concentric circles.
Similarly juxtaposed couples appear in both Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze and Stoclet Frieze.

In The Kiss, Klimt depicted a couple locked in an embrace. The rest of the oil painting dissolves into shimmering, extravagant flat patterning. This patterning has clear ties to Art Nouveau and to the Arts and Crafts movement and also evokes the conflict between two- and three-dimensionality intrinsic to the work of Degas and other modernists. Paintings such as The Kiss were visual manifestations of fin-de-siecle spirit because they capture a decadence conveyed by opulent and sensuous images. Some think that Klimt and his beloved companion Emilie Flöge modeled for the masterpiece. Another suggestion has been that she was a model called 'Red Hilda.' There is strong visual evidence that she is the model for 'Woman with feather boa' , 'Goldfish' and 'Danae'. She told her nephew that she was the woman in 'The Kiss'. Nothing is certain.

 
Klimt's use of gold had been hugely influenced by a trip he had made to Italy in 1903. He went to Ravenna where he saw the Byzantine mosaics in the Church of San Vitale. For Klimt the flatness of the mosaics and their lack of perspective and depth only enhanced their golden brilliance and he started to make unprecedented use of gold and silver leaf in his own work. The Kiss is a discreet expression of Klimt’s emphasis on eroticism and the liberation therein. The Kiss falls in line with Klimt’s exploration of fulfillment and the redeeming, transformative power of love and art.[citation needed] The Kiss deviates from Klimt’s frequent portrayal of woman as the lascivious femme fatale. The piece is currently at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum, which is housed in the Belvedere palace, in Vienna, Austria. Gustav Klimt and "The Kiss" were selected as the main motif for a collectors' coin, the 100 euro gold The Painting coin issued on 5 November 2003. The obverse depicts Klimt in his studio with two unfinished masterpieces on easels, while the reverse shows "Der Kuss" (The Kiss).