This publication looks at the life and work of Egon Schiele (1890-1918), one of the most famous exponents of Expressionism, through a selection of fascinating works by the artist. In addition, the book enlarges the usual monographic perspective by exploring the relationship between Schiele and young avant-garde artists such as Oskar Kokoschka, Max Oppenheimer, Anton Kolig and especially Gustav Klimt, who was like a brother to Schiele, and also his mentor.
The volume brings together 120 works from the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna and other prestigious Austrian and German museums and includes many original paintings, drawings and sculptures, offering the reader an opportunity to explore the artistic journey of this great Austrian painter and also become familiar with the cultural landscape of Vienna in the early 1900s. The works painted by Schiele and others were part of a movement that gave life to the renewal of modern art, a process that began with Jugenstil and went on to 'open out' to Viennese Expressionism. Certainly Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is a central figure, the linchpin in the artistic development of the young Schiele, who was inspired by his mentor's art but who very quickly abandoned the undulating lines embellished with gold and vegetal decorations, and moved towards a rawer realism, something harsher and more severe, expressed in the main in portraits and nude bodies.
Genius and excess, in a romantic sense, seem to have played an important part in the critical success of these artists; history has passed on an image of them as loners, with talents that made the most of difficult and tormented personalities. From the controversial and magnificent panels painted by Klimt for the Vienna university, through to the torn flesh of Kokoschka's beasts, and the dangerous love liaisons of the young Schiele, who was the scandalous lover of young models: all this has contributed to the birth of a kind of critical voyeurism, which has now become part of the historical appraisal of that very fertile artistic period.
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