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
,
extreme 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
Günter Brus
Francis Bacon
to
Tracey Emin
. Today, his then misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market.
This monograph features
the paintings
drawings
that
retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele’s life
. These works are accompanied by essays introducing his life and oeuvre, situating the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and charting his extraordinary legacy.