Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele, a prominent Austrian Expressionist, was known for his unique graphic style. He often distorted figures in his art to create bold and daring portraits and self-portraits. Schiele's paintings delved deeply into the psyche and sexuality of his subjects, making them some of the most remarkable works of the 20th century.

Biography of Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was born in Tulln an der Donau, a small Austrian town known as Blumenstadt, or "city of flowers." Although not a prolific student, Schiele's primary school art instructor recognized his natural talent for draughtsmanship and encouraged formal training. After his father's death and being placed under his uncle and godfather Leopold Czihaczek's guardianship, Schiele enrolled in Vienna's Akademie der bildenden Kunste in 1906, where Gustav Klimt had also studied.

The two established a mentor-protégé association that had a profound impact on Schiele's early artistic growth and development. Klimt guided Schiele in the studio and introduced him to patrons, models, and the works of other artists — such as Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and Jan Toorop — whom Schiele, despite being a dedicated art student, had little opportunity to discover, given Vienna's relative isolation from European avant-garde movements at the time. Through Klimt, Schiele also became acquainted with the Wiener Werkstätte, the arts and crafts workshops associated with the Vienna Secession, a movement closely linked with other modern art styles of the era.

In 1908, at the age of eighteen, Schiele took part in his first exhibition, a group show in Klosterneuburg, a small town north of Vienna. The following year, Schiele and several fellow students left the Academy in protest, criticizing the school's conservative teaching methods and its reluctance to embrace more progressive artistic practices that were emerging across Europe. As part of this rebellion, Schiele founded the Neuekunstgruppe (New Art Group), consisting of other young, dissatisfied artists who had also departed from the Academy.

The new group wasted no time, organizing numerous public exhibitions across Vienna. During this period, Schiele delved into new painterly expressions, embracing distortions, jagged contours of form, and a somber palette distinct from the more decorative Art Nouveau style. Essentially, Schiele was gradually moving away from the style associated with Klimt, although the two would maintain a close relationship until Klimt's passing in early 1918. Judging by the content of Schiele's work, it seems that both mentor and mentee shared a profound interest in women.

Shortly after establishing the Neuekunstgruppe, Schiele began to experience modest success as a painter and draughtsman. In 1911, he held his first solo exhibition at Vienna's Galerie Miethke, where his growing inclination towards self-portraiture and sexualized — sometimes bordering on lewd — depictions of young women was evident. While Schiele's work caused a scandal in Viennese society, he also managed to sell many of his explicit images to private collectors.

Schiele's early studies stirred controversy due to his depiction of children as nude models and for portraying pubescent girls in implicitly erotic scenarios, exemplified by his work "Nude Girls Reclining" (1911), where two young girls are depicted as if after an erotic encounter. That same year, Schiele briefly resided in Krumau, his mother's hometown, where his practice of inviting young children to his studio met disapproval from the residents.

The subsequent year proved pivotal for Schiele, both personally and artistically. Alongside participating in several group exhibitions in Budapest, Cologne, and Vienna, he received an invitation from Galerie Hans Goltz in Munich to exhibit his work alongside members of the Der Blaue Reiter group of Expressionists, including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and Alexej von Jawlensky.  

In 1912, during his time in Neulengbach, Schiele found himself arrested at his studio and held in custody for twenty-four days. He faced accusations of kidnapping and raping a twelve-year-old girl. These charges were eventually dropped, and Schiele was instead convicted of exposing children to erotic images. The police seized 125 of his labeled "degenerate" works, and a judge burned one of his drawings in the courtroom. This particular work, depicting a young girl nude from the waist down, had previously been displayed on his studio wall. The incident had a profound impact on Schiele, prompting him to cease the practice of using children as models. However, the morbidity and sexual explicitness evident in his work, especially his drawings, seemed to intensify following his release from prison.

Nevertheless, Schiele's career continued to thrive upon his return to Vienna. In 1913, he held his first solo exhibition in Munich, followed by another solo show in Paris in 1914. Simultaneously, his personal life underwent a significant shift. In 1915, he wrote to a friend, expressing his intention to marry "advantageously," and proposed to Edith Harms. 

Just four days after his marriage, Schiele was drafted into military service. Despite this, he did not engage in actual combat during the war. Instead, he was granted the opportunity to pursue his artistic endeavors and showcase his work wherever he was stationed. Inspired by his travels during wartime, Schiele created a series of landscapes and cityscapes at this time, notable for their absence of the artist's typical exaggerated contours.

By 1917, Schiele had returned to Vienna and was deeply engrossed in his work. During this year, he and Klimt jointly established the city's Kunsthalle, a new exhibition venue aimed at encouraging Austrian artists to stay within their homeland.

The following year brought both poignant success and tragedy to the artist on multiple fronts. In February, a stroke followed by pneumonia claimed the life of his mentor and close friend, Klimt. Merely a month later, the Vienna Secession held its forty-ninth annual exhibition, dedicating the main exhibition space to Schiele's work, resulting in a remarkable commercial triumph.

However, in October of that same year, a series of tragic events unfolded. Schiele's wife, Edith, who was six months pregnant, fell victim to the Spanish flu pandemic that was sweeping through Europe. Tragically, she passed away, and just three days later, Schiele himself succumbed to the illness at the age of twenty-eight. In the brief span between their deaths, Schiele created several sketches of his late wife, capturing the intense grief and sorrow of his loss.

Egon Schiele's Art Style

Painter Gustav Klimt was a significant influence on Egon Schiele's artistic journey, serving as both a friend and mentor. Although Schiele inherited Klimt's fascination with erotic depictions of the female body and shared his mentor's intense sexual appetite, the emotionally charged and often unsettling Expressionist style that Schiele later developed diverged from Klimt's Art Nouveau-inspired approach. Schiele's work delved into the inner lives and emotional states of his subjects, which was a direct departure from Klimt's preference for a more brilliant palette and shimmering, patterned surfaces typical of the Art Nouveau style.

Schiele's portraits and self-portraits played a pivotal role in revitalizing both genres, introducing an unprecedented level of emotional and sexual directness. He defied conventional notions of beauty through his use of figural distortion. Often featuring himself or those close to him, Schiele's portraits frequently depicted their subjects in the nude, posed in revealing and unsettling angles — often from an aerial perspective — stripped of the typical secondary attributes associated with the portrait genre. At times, the artist incorporated traditional motifs into these intensely personal images, infusing them with a more universal, allegorical commentary on the human condition.

Throughout his brief career, Schiele produced around three thousand drawings, establishing himself as an exceptionally prolific and unmatched draughtsman. He considered drawing his primary art form due to its immediacy of expression, and his body of work includes some of the most exemplary drawings of the 20th century. Even in his paintings, Schiele's style retained the essence of drawing, emphasizing contour, graphic mark-making, and linearity that defined his unique artistic voice.