Artist

Egon Schiele

1890–1918 · Austrian

Egon Schiele entered the Vienna Academy at sixteen and quickly rejected its conservative training. Gustav Klimt became an early supporter, but by 1910 Schiele had transformed the decorative linearity of the Secession into a more abrasive form of Expressionism. His self-portraits, nudes and portraits use angular contour, exposed paper and psychologically charged gesture to make the body appear vulnerable, erotic and unstable. Landscapes and townscapes extend the same sense of mortality to houses, trees and streets. In 1912 he was briefly imprisoned after authorities confiscated drawings they considered obscene; the episode became part of the mythology around his work, though his development was broader than scandal. In his final years, especially after his marriage to Edith Harms in 1915, his figures became fuller and more spatially grounded. He died in the 1918 influenza pandemic at age twenty-eight.

Painting; drawing; watercolor; gouache