Who Was Egon Schiele?

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter and draughtsman whose life and career were marked by tragedy. In a short career, this artist created more than 3,000 drawings, in which his illustrative style is revealed through bold, graphic lines and emphatically sharp contours. Schiele's works are recognizable by their strange, often grotesquely distorted figures, through which the artist sought to convey humanity's inner conflicts. As Gustav Klimt's protégé, Egon Schiele's work influenced the Expressionists, the Neo-Expressionists, and countless generations after them, and today his paintings, created a century ago, are admired by nearly every young person.

"Self-Portrait with Chinese Lantern Plant and Fruit," 1910 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Egon was born in 1890 in Tulln an der Donau, Austria. His father was the stationmaster at Tulln, and as a child, visiting his father Adolf at work, the young artist often drew intricate sketches of trains. Adolf supported his son's talent from the very beginning, and his death in 1905 deeply affected the sensitive teenager. It is believed that this tragedy shaped the artist's fascination with inner human turmoil and mortality.

"Death and the Maiden," 1915 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

At the age of 16, Egon became the youngest student in the history of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, but three years later, dissatisfied with the academy's conservative approach, he abandoned his studies and, together with fellow students Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer, founded the New Art Group (Neuekunstgruppe). Their unsettling works reflected the era's prevailing mood of liberation from tradition.

"The Hermits," 1912 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In 1907, Egon met Gustav Klimt, who, impressed by the young artist's talent, took him under his wing and introduced him to the most influential painters of the day. The two worked together extensively — Egon's early works reflect Gustav's preoccupation with exploring female form and Art Nouveau. Later, Egon rejected Gustav's style, and his own works came to feature a dark, somber palette and distorted forms. Nevertheless, Gustav became the subject of one of Egon's most famous works. It is believed that in "The Hermits," the figure on the left depicts Egon overshadowing Gustav on the right — the student surpassing the master.

Egon's sister Gertrude became one of the first and most frequently depicted subjects in his art. His studio had become a refuge and gathering place for local children, which is why so many of the people he portrayed were very young. This fact is also linked to a highly controversial episode in the artist's life — in 1912, Schiele was arrested and imprisoned for seducing a young girl. He was acquitted that same year, but the traumatic experience and time spent in prison meant he never painted children again.

"Portrait of Gerda Schiele," 1909 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

In 1915, Egon married Edith Harms, and five years later he was drafted into the army. While abroad, the artist experimented with painting landscapes and towns. The most expensive work ever sold at auction is "Houses with Laundry (Suburb II)" (1914), an oil canvas for which £24,700,000 was paid at a Sotheby's auction in 2011.

"Houses with Laundry (Suburb II)," 1914 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)

After the war, having returned to Vienna in 1917, Egon devoted all his time to art. His favorite model was his wife Edith. In a cruel irony of fate, the man obsessed with death and suffering himself died tragically of the Spanish flu. This happened on October 31, 1918, just three days after his wife and their unborn child died of the same illness. In his final days, Egon drew numerous sketches of his late wife. The artist died on the threshold of the commercial success that had eluded him for almost his entire life. Today, the largest collection of Egon Schiele's paintings can be found at the Leopold Museum in Vienna.

"Edith Seated in a Striped Dress," 1915 (photo: Wikimedia Commons)