Egon Schiele
Biography of Austrian Expressionist Artist, Figurative Painter and Self-Portraitist.
Visual Arts Guide

Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

The Austrian artist Egon Schiele specialised in Expressionist figure painting whose powerful imagery has made him one of the most famous artists of the early 20th century. Strongly influenced by Gustav Klimt, his works are noted for the way he drew people with an almost animalistic intensity, twisted shape and overt sexuality. A short-lived genius, his most notable works include Mourning Woman, 1912 (Museum of Modern Art, New York); Houses on the River, 1914 (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid) and Embrace, 1917 (Osterrichische Galerie, Vienna). Like Van Gogh, Schiele was a compulsive painter of self-portraits, executing numerous shocking examples, such as Eros, 1911; and the grisly Nude, 1910, in which his left arm is portrayed bleeding and severed at the elbow.

Schiele was born in Tulln, a town in Lower Austria, on the Danube. His father was a stationmaster for the Austrian railway. As a child he attended a local school where his art teacher recognised his talent for drawing and encouraged him to continue. When he was 15 his father died of syphilis and Schiele was looked after by his uncle. In 1906, at the age of 16, he applied to the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna, where Gustav Klimt had once studied. Within the year however, at the insistence of the school, he was sent to the more traditional Akademie der Bildenden Künste to continue his studies: the same Academy that was to reject the young art student Adolf Hitler one year later). In 1907 Schiele sought out the acquaintance of Gustav Klimt, who was known to mentor talented young artists. Klimt took the young Schiele under his wing, buying his drawings, providing models and introducing him to potential patrons. In 1909 Schiele took part in the important Internationale Kunstschau exhibition and quit the Academy soon after.

Schiele's fine art painting is intensely unique and individual. It concentrates on sexually intense subjects, mainly portraits (many self-portraits towards the end of his life). His figures look isolated, their bodies contorted, their faces gaunt, lost in thought. By contorting his subject, and using foreshortening techniques he often eliminated their limbs which reinforces a sense of disconcertion. The women are overtly sexual and confrontational, opening their legs and displaying their private parts for the artist and viewer. Even today his work can appear quite shocking - let alone 100 years ago!

As it was, his disturbing oil paintings attracted fierce opposition and led to his arrest and imprisonment. His art was, however, recognised by other artists and people in advanced circles. Some of his other important works include Pregnant Woman and Death, 1911 (National Gallery, Prague); Self Portrait with Black Vase, 1911 (Historiches Museum der Stadt, Vienna; Agony, 1912 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich); Lovers, 1914; Death and Girl, 1915 (Osterreichisches Galerie, Vienna); Sitting Woman with Legs Drawn Up, 1917 (Narodni Galerie, Prague) and Kneeling Girl Propped on Her Elbows, 1917.

In 1915 he married and he started painting sensitive portraits of his new wife, which show a more naturalistic approach. This style found more favour and the following few years he received a growing number of portrait commissions. By 1918 he was beginning to experience a previously elusive, commercial success. He was invited to participate in the Secession's 49th exhibition, held in Vienna, which was a triumphant success. Unfortunately his luck ran out sooner than he could have wished. Later that year, he and his pregnant wife caught the Spanish flu and died within 3 days of each other (along with 20 million other Europeans who died in the Influenza).

Schiele's art is timelessly contemporary. Although he only lived for 28 years, he was hugely prolific and painted more than 300 paintings and thousands of works on paper. The very things which made his art unpopular in his early years - the ugly distorted bodies, personal angst and unveiled eroticism - are precisely the qualities that have ensured his art endures. He saw the human figure or spirit as an animal rather than a moral human, and insisted on absolute freedom for creative individuality and self-determination. As a measure of his status in the modern history of art, one of his paintings, Wilted Sunflowers, which had been confiscated from a family in France during the Second World War, fetched $10.7 million when it was auctioned at Christie's in 2006.

• For information about contemporary artists in Ireland, see: Irish Art.
• For news about painters and sculptors from Ireland and abroad, see: Irish Art News.

• How to Update This Artist Biography of Egon Schiele

Guide to Irish Art Exhibitions and Shows
© visual-arts-cork.com 2008 All rights reserved.