Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was an important Expressionist artist. His dark, erotic paintings often featured the self, the body and the land in unsettling positions.
Egon Schiele was born in Tulln, Vienna in 1890. In his brief lifespan of twenty-eight years, Schiele became a major Expressionist artist. First mentored by Gustav Klimt, Schiele later turned to a harsher eros in his drawings and paintings, haunted as he was by his father's death and his own disruptive sexuality.
Beginnings
Egon's father, Adolf, was a station master. He died when Egon was fifteen of complications due to syphilis. Both the sounds and speed of trains and the dark consequences of sexuality were to affect Egon's art. Schiele spent three years, until he was nineteen, at the Academy of Fine Arts, through the support of his uncle Leopold. During this time, he came under the influence of Klimt, whose group of artists had recently split off from the Vienna Succession. However, while Schiele's colours and patterns mirrored Klimt's for a time, his aesthetic began to differ. He became a member of the Expressionist school, valuing innovation and an honest assessment of self over tradition and romanticism.
The Self
Darkly inspired by his burgeoning sexuality and the spectre of his father's demise, Egon became obsessed with the self portrait. He drew and painted himself in many postures and gestures. Many of them featured his hands in awkward or occult positions, such as Seer, 1910. His figures, including his commissioned works, were often tortured in terms of proportion and shading. He also regularly used his sister Gerti as a model and later, his mistress, Wally Neuzil. Many of his nudes of himself or his female models are featured masturbating or engaged in sexual poses.
The Controversy
In 1912, Schiele, who had been living in Neulengbach with Wally, was arrested. He frequently painted portraits of the children and adolescents who visited his studio, both here and in Krumau. Nude Girl with Black Hair from 1910 is a famous example. One of the girls was a runaway from a wealthy family. Her father charged Egon with abduction, though the sentence was lessened to exposing a minor to debauchery, after nude paintings were discovered. Schiele had to spend three days in prison and one of his sketches were burned. After this time, Schiele began to paint more spiritual works and accept commissioned portraits for patrons.
Endings
Schiele, who had been seeing both the Harms sisters, Adele and Edith, separated from Wally in 1915. He settled on the well-off and placid Edith as his future wife, marrying her before he was drafted into the Czech army that same year. His formerly risky work diffused into portraits of society people, religious figures and aloof familial groupings like The Family of 1918. He also depicted rural scenes of flowers, trees and painted a series called the Dead Town, based on the cityscape of Krumau. In 1918, Klimt died and later that year, Egon did too. He, Edith and their unborn child succumbed to the Spanish flu. His work can be found in Expressionist collections all over the world, including the Leopold museum in Vienna.
