Egon Schiele. Expression and Pose

Egon Schiele’s oeuvre is one of the epochal artistic achievements of the early twentieth century. His work combines tradition with a radical departure from that very same tradition. It testifies to his creative innovation that gave rise to an expressive art whose radicalism is astonishingly modern. Schiele’s self-portraits are particularly impressive: they create a brand-new image of the body in which expression and pose play essential parts, his facial expressions and gestures conveying the existential abysses of the artistic soul. The portraits he painted—mostly of people close to him—resemble psychograms of the sitters. By contrast, the pictures he created of nature and his immediate surroundings are steeped in melancholy and symbolism. This publication explores the many sides of Schiele’s personality, from the dramatic events in the short life of this exceptional artist who died at the age of just twenty-eight, to his gift for literature and his undisputed talent for networking within the Viennese art world before and during World War I.