From Rebellious to Revered
Obsessive, radical, disturbing: Egon Schiele
After
Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model
Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the
annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a
passionate provocateur, this didn’t prove to be too big a challenge.
His
haggard, overstretched figures,
drastic depiction of sexuality, and
self-portraits in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions
bordering between brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of Klimt’s hymns of love, sexuality, and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele’s work spoke of a
brutal honesty, one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society.
Although his works were later defamed as “degenerate” and for a time were almost forgotten altogether, they
influenced generations of artists – from
Francis Bacon and Günter Brus to
Tracey Emin. Today, his then-misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market.
Presented in a
voluminous format that captures all of the intensity and emotional truth of his work,
Egon Schiele. The Complete Paintings 1909–1918 features
221 paintings and
146 drawings that
retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele’s life. With many pieces
newly photographed for this edition, these works are paired with
excerpts from his countless writings and poems, as well as essays introducing his life and oeuvre, to situate the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and trace his extraordinary legacy.
