Twisted brilliance
The complete catalogue of Egon Schiele, 1909-1918
Over the course of his short life, Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) blazed a turbulent Expressionist trail. A child prodigy, young rebel, and chronic provocateur, he caused uproar among the establishment with his contorted lines, distorted bodies, and explicit eroticism and continues to startle to this day with his unflinching images of himself and his nude, splayed subjects.
Schiele reveled in stylistic freedom and shock. In the twilight years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he swiftly abandoned classical figuration for a distorted and exaggerated physicality that rendered emotional and sexual truth rather than refined beauty ideals. His subjects are elongated, angular, and twisted. Ribs protrude from skeletal forms. Fingers and limbs contort, skin is sickly yellow, and eyes are dark afraid. The body becomes the locus of human drama and anguish. Schiele's only reprieve was the promise of sex. Like no other early 20th-century artist, he laid genitalia bare, bringing some of the most candid renderings of the vagina in Western art history, as well as scenes of masturbation and lesbian sex.
Schiele's life ended with the same drama and emotional turmoil that defined his work, dying of Spanish influenza in 1918 just after his pregnant wife Edith succumbed to the same pandemic. His legacy, despite the brevity of his life, is exceptional. His influence can be traced through the work of countless 20th-century masters, from Francis Bacon and Otto Muehl to Julian Schnabel, David Bowie, and Tracey Emin.
In this expansive new book, Egon Schiele. Complete Paintings, 1909-1918, we survey the complete catalogue of Schiele paintings from his most innovative and prolific decade. The 221 featured works are presented alongside biographical details, expert insights, as well as Schiele's own writings and poems, offering intimate access to his ideas and psyche.
About the Author
Tobias G. Natter is an internationally acknowledged expert on art in “Vienna around 1900”. For many years he worked at the Austrian Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, most recently as head curator. Parallel to that he was a guest curator, for example, at the Tate Liverpool, the Neue Galerie New York, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Schirn in Frankfurt am Main and repeatedly for the Jewish Museum in Vienna. From 2006 to 2011 he directed the Vorarlberg Museum in Bregenz, and from 2011 to 2013 was director of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. In 2014 he founded the Natter Fine Arts, which specializes in assessing works of art and developing exhibition concepts. In the context of his wide-ranging publishing activities he edited the current complete catalogue of Klimt paintings published in 2012.
Industry Reviews
"Schiele's daringly explicit drawings are so immaculately reproduced that you could cut them out and frame them."
"Schiele fans, especially those with capacious bookcases, will love it."