Schiele, Egon

(1890–1918)

   The most eloquent representative of Expressionism in Austrian painting, Schiele achieved not only fame but also notoriety for his graphic and often grotesque depictions of nudes, sometimes in full sexual acts. Some critics still see him as little more than an extraordinarily visionary pornographer. In 1912, Schiele was punished with a 24-day jail term for his anatomically explicit drawings of schoolgirls. Schiele enjoyed the protection of Gustav Klimt, but while the latter hid the physical longings of his subjects behind densely textured decorative veneers, his protege scorned all hints of innuendo. Toward the end of his career, Schiele was also studying the work of Edvard Munch, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Vincent Van Gogh.

   Schiele did not look away from his subjects as he initially drew them, a technique that he took over from the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. The result was the long, intertwining lines that are the hallmark of his art, designed to render emotion, particularly of the erotic sort, more compellingly than the interplay of light and darkness. Schiele’s work, however, was not improvisatory; he often did multiple sketches of a model, adding color only when his basic outlines satisfied him. And his work did rise above the pornographic; sexuality for him could also be a surrogate for feelings of aloneness and the desire for connectedness. Schiele died, along with his wife, in the great influenza pandemic that came toward the end of World War I.