Schiele, Egon

Schiele, Egon (ā`gôn shē`lə), 1890–1918, Austrian expressionist painter and draftsman, studied Vietta Academy of Fine Arts. Influenced by the French impressionists, then by Gustav Klimt, Schiele developed a taut, linear style, emphasizing attenuated anatomical structure in drawings and paintings that often have strong sexual subject matter. Best known for his gaunt self-portraits and erotic figure studies, he also painted haunting portraits of his contemporaries and dark, brooding landscapes. With Kokoschka, he was in the forefront of the Austrian expressionist movement (see expressionism) until his sudden death at 28 of influenza. The Neue Galerie, New York City, has the largest collection of works by Schiele in the United States.

Bibliography

See biographies by F. Whitford (1985), S. Wilson (1987), and J. Kallir (2003); E. Mitsch, The Art of Egon Schiele (tr., 2d ed. 1988); M. Dabrowski, Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection (1998); R. Price, ed., Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections (2005).

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Schiele, Egon

(born , June 12, 1890, Tulln, Austria—died Oct. 31, 1918, Vienna) Austrian painter, draftsman, and printmaker. He was strongly influenced by the Jugendstil movement, and the linearity and subtlety of his work owe much to Gustav Klimt's decorative elegance. Still, he always emphasized expression over decoration, heightening the emotive power of line with a feverish intensity. His candid, agitated, erotic images—often portraits of women— caused a sensation, and in 1912 he was briefly imprisoned for indecency. His landscapes exhibit the same febrile quality of colour and line. A special room was reserved for his work at a Viennese exhibition in 1918, just before he died in the influenza epidemic of that year. He has since been recognized as one of the great artists of Expressionism.