Schiele
“Art cannot be modern… Art is primordially eternal.”
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Biography
Schiele on his deathbed, 1918
1890: Birth of Egon Schiele in Tulln, Austria
1890–1900: Schiele devotes himself to drawing at a very young age, finding his first motifs in his native city and his surroundings.
1906: Schiele enters the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
1907: Meets Gustav Klimt. Klimt influenced Schiele’s first works and never ceased to encourage the young artist.
1908: Exhibition in Klosterneuburg.
1909: Rebels against the teachings of his Academy professor and he writes, along with several colleagues, a list of demands asking for greater freedom of artistic expression. Because of this incident, he is forced to leave the Academy. Schiele then founds the New Art group (Neukunstgruppe) along with artists like Anton Peschka and Hans Massmann. The group will hold their first exhibition at Vienna’s Pisko Salon. Thanks to Klimt, Schiele is invited to the prestigious International Exhibition of Vienna.
1910: Meets with Arthur Roessler, an art critic who presents Schiele to many collectors.
1911: Works in Krumau, Bavaria. He lives with one of his models, Wally Neuzil, offending the morality of the habitants of the small village. He then leaves for Neulengbach before settling down in Vienna in 1912.
1912: He exhibits in Budapest with the Neukunstgruppe and in Munich. Publication of his first lithograph. He is accused of the corruption of a minor, and is sentenced to three weeks in prison between March and April, a penalty that profoundly affects him. He then records his bitterness and revolts over his punishment in his Prison Journal, published by Arthur Roessler in 1922. In July, he presents at Cologne’s Sonderbund Exhibition, one of the most outstanding events of Austrian expressionism.
1913: He is admitted into the Bund Österreichischer Künstler (a league of Austrian artists) whose president is Gustav Klimt. In March, Schiele and the other artists in the league exhibit in Budapest. He then participates in the spring exhibition at the Munich Secession, at the Grosse Kunstausstellung in Berlin and at the forty-third exhibition at the Vienna Secession. He also contributes his writings and drawings to the Berlin review Die Aktion.
1915: Marriage of Egon Schiele and Edith Harms. The effects of this lifestyle change on Schiele can be seen in his work as his eroticism became less violent. Even though he had escaped from mobilisation, the medical commission returned to its decision and declared him fit for the front. He is drafted into the Austrian army. His artistic production decreased considerably.
1916: Schiele exhibits at the Berlin Secession and then at the Munich Secession. Die Aktion gives him a special issue.
1917: He returns to Vienna where he sits on the Imperial Commission. From now on, Schiele can spend his time focusing on painting. He creates the Kunsthalle, a free association of artists. He participates in an exhibition at Vienna’s Kaisergarten and then in various exhibitions in Amsterdam, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Schiele begins to contribute to the new Viennese movement, Der Anbruch.
1918: Death of Gustav Klimt on 6 February. Schiele’s participation in the Viennese Secession is a success for his financial and artistic plans. A number of Viennese personalities are interested in his ever-growing body of work and success. In the fall, his wife contracts the Spanish flu and dies on 28 October. Egon Schiele also contracts the virus, follows suit and falls ill, passing away on 31 October.
Foreword
Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill in the manipulation of line, above all, lent a taut expressivity to all his work. Profoundly convinced of his own significance as an artist, Schiele achieved more in his abruptly curtailed youth than many other artists achieved in a full lifetime.
Self-Portrait
1907
Oil on cardboard, 32.4 × 31.2 cm
Private collection
In the photograph of Schiele on his deathbed, the twenty-eight year old appears asleep, his gaunt body completely emaciated, his head resting on his bent arm; the similarity to his drawings is astounding. Because of the danger of infection, his last visitors were able to communicate with the Spanish flu-infected Schiele only by way of a mirror, which was set up on the threshold between his room and the parlour. During the same year, 1918, Schiele had designed a mausoleum for himself and his wife.
Portrait of Leopold Czihaczek, Standing
1907
Oil on canvas, 149.8 × 49.7 cm
Private collection
Did he know, he who had so often distinguished himself as a person of foresight, of his nearing death? Did his individual fate fuse collectively with the fall of the old system, that of the Habsburg Empire.
Schiele’s productive life scarcely extended beyond ten years, yet during this time he produced 334 oil paintings and 2,503 drawings (Jane Kallir, New York, 1990). He painted portraits and still-lifes land and townscapes; however, he became famous for his draftsmanship.
Village with Mountains
1907
Oil on paper, 21.7 × 28 cm
Private collection
His sketches already demonstrated an astonishing sense of observation. Schiele, like many other expressionist artists of his times, looked into the innermost psychic life of his subjects as well as his own. According to the expressionists, this introspection was the purest definition of the process of artistic creation.
A potent aspect of Expressionism was the conviction held by its creators, that their endeavours were carrying art into a wholly new realm of experience. Expressionist art could display spectacular technical innovation. However, formal, surface qualities were a means, not an end.
Landscape in Lower Austria
1907
Oil on card, 17.5 × 22.5 cm
Private collection
Expressionism aspired to give form to nothing less than a new kind of inward vision. It involved a heightened perception that appeared, to some viewers, to verge on clairvoyance. Expressionists sought an intimate, subjective, and deeply resonant communication between the artist and the viewer. Kokoschka described it as “form-giving to the experience, thus mediator and message from self to fellow human. As in love, two individuals are necessary. Expressionism does not live in an ivory tower; it calls upon a fellow being whom it awakens.”
Sunflower I
1908
Oil on carboard, 44 × 33 cm
Niederösterreichisches Landesmuseum, Vienna
Straining against the moral grip of conventions of thought, speech and behaviour inherited from the nineteenth century, Expressionism was the means by which many artists and writers tried