Egon Schiele
Born – Vienna, Austria 1890
Died – Vienna, Austria 1918
Egon Schiele was a chief expondent of the ideology of Vienna Secession which took hold c. 1908. Founded in 1897 by Gustave Klimt, these avant-garde artists’ organization and exhibiting society introduced Modernism into Austrian art. It focused on using traditional painting subjects as vehicles for the expression of mood and emotion. Schiele applied this and the influence of Freudian psychology to his portraits. His complex personality, imbued with sexual anxiety and fear of death, informs often explicit images of young women and of himself. Haunted eyes and emaciated limbs and torsos of semi-clad or naked figures are rendered in memorable watercolour drawings. Schiele treated the medium unconventionally. Natural colour is dramatized; pigments bleed together and are mottled, barely contained by expressive outlines. Sexual tension is ever-present as is the suggestion of abuse, self-inflicted or otherwise. In The Ebrace, the lovers appear loveless and lifeless, bound up in resignation to mortality. Schiele married in 1915 and his paintings seemed to respond to this stability by becoming brighter and more sensuous. It is tantalizing to speculate how his work would have developed had he survived the influenza epidemic of 1918.
Masterpieces:
- Nude Self-Portrait
- Reclining Woman
Text: The A-Z of Art, Nicola Hodge and Libby Anson.
Books About egon schiele
Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors
Jane Kallir
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Egon Schiele Landscapes
Rudolph Leopold
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Egon Schiele
Erwin Mitsch
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