Egon Schiele Austria, 1890-1918

Akt mit gekreuzten Beinen (Nude with Legs Crossed) (1918) is an excellent late example of the subject which Schiele has become most celebrated (and infamous) for within twentieth century art history – the female nude. Made the year of Schiele’s death, 1918 coincidentally proved to be the most pivotal and successful year of Schiele’s career, with a solo exhibition at the 49^th Vienna Secession a few months before his death bringing him much critical acclaim and financial success.

A highly skilled draughtsman, Schiele reportedly always drew from life and never used an eraser. Art historian and author of the Schiele catalogue raisonné Jane Kallir has commented that from 1917 Schiele achieved the “perfect line” for his drawings and was able to work at his fastest, using just one sweep of crayon or pencil to capture the contours of his subject. His lines became noticeably softer and his depictions more realistic than earlier studies, which were characterised by their angularity and sinuous sense of form. Overt, shocking eroticism had given way to a more classical appreciation of the naked body and is considered by some art historians to be more directly influenced by Schiele’s friend and mentor, Gustav Klimt. Accuracy and technical precision had become increasingly important to Schiele, and as such few of his 1918 studies were coloured with watercolour or gouache, with the artist preferring to work with a monochrome palette. Married by this time to Edith Harms, Schiele would frequently use her or her sister Adele as models, yet these latter studies were less intensely intimate than earlier depictions, which had often featured much younger, unmarried models or sex workers Schiele either knew or had been romantically involved with (such as his previous partner Wally Neuzil). His later nudes were more voyeuristic and posed, rarely meeting the gaze of the viewer and holding more classic poses which would have been seen in contemporary pornography circulated by Schiele’s patrons.

A contentious figure who was famously imprisoned in 1912 for seducing a girl of thirteen, Schiele has faced much controversy for his depictions of nude, often under-age, women in his art. His raw, explicit style bordered on fetish, evoking the same kind of unabashed grotesque eroticism employed later by artists such as German Expressionist George Grosz, and American cartoonist Robert Crumb. Interestingly, while Schiele’s moral character remains dubious, museums and art historians are beginning to reframe his nudes in a more positive light. The 2014 exhibition Egon Schiele: The Radical Nude, at The Courtauld in London reinterpreted these images to not only be lustful and sensational, but adoring, idealising the female nude in a way not previously seen in art history. While claims that these nude studies are ‘feminist’ are possibly an overreach, there is no doubt that especially in his later years Schiele sought to elevate the female body, unabashedly painting in a provocative style which celebrated not only female beauty, but female sexuality. He has proved enormously influential on many modern and contemporary female artists who produce implicitly feminist art, most notably Tracey Emin, who’s languid, sinuous nude studies and self-portraits strongly evoke Schiele in their sensuality and eerie morbidity.

Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918) is considered one of the most controversial and influential artists of the early twentieth century. Born in Tulln, Austria he studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna where he met Gustav Klimt in 1907. Frustrated by the school’s conservatism he left in 1909 and founded the radical artist collective Neukunstgruppe. Encouraged by Klimt, Schiele was invited to exhibit at the 1909 Vienna Kunstchau alongside many other important European artists of the day including Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch.

Having begun his fine art career painting expressionist style landscapes and portraits, many of which were commissions from the Viennese intelligentsia, in 1911 Schiele left Vienna, living between several small Austrian villages. During these years he largely painted and drew self-portraits and erotic depictions of nude or semi-clothed women and couples. He also painted various allegories of life, death and sex, most famously his oil on canvas work Death and the Maiden (1915), now housed in The Belvedere in Vienna. While he sought solitude from the capital’s growing art hub, Schiele continued to participate in important group and Secession exhibitions across Europe, with Galerie Hans Goltz presenting Schiele’s first solo show in 1913. Joining the Austrian army upon the outbreak of World War I, Schiele continued to draw and paint during his military service, culminating in a breakthrough solo exhibition at the Vienna Secession in 1918 which resulted in much critical and financial success. This acclaim was short-lived as Schiele died soon after of influenza, a few days after the death of his pregnant wife, Edith Harms.

Despite dying young at the age of just twenty-eight, Schiele was highly prolific over his lifetime, producing over 300 oil paintings and around 2,800 drawings and watercolours. A large number of his paintings reside within museum collections internationally, with the Leopold Museum in Vienna housing the most, with forty-three paintings and over 200 watercolours, drawings and prints.