Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian Expressionist painter known mostly for his unique portraits, who lived from 1890 to 1918. He was very prolific during his short life, producing over 3,000 works of art.

Schiele was inclined from the very beginning to draw.  His earliest subjects were trains and he spent so many hours drawing them that his father felt that he had to get rid of all of his sketchbooks to break the habit. When Schiele was 15 years old, his father died and his went to live with his uncle.  Though his uncle did not approve of art either, he was allowed an art tutor, and this marks the beginning of his short, but intense art career.  

In 1906, Egon Schiele began attending the traditional art school, Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. In 1907, Schiele befriended Gustav Klimt and asked him to be a mentor.  Klimt was well-known at this time and served as a mentor for many young students.  Klimt took a liking to Schiele, bought some of his work, and set him up with patrons and models. In 1909, after finding the teaching style of Akademie der Bildenden Künste to be too conservative and restricting, Schiele quit art school and helped found the “New Art Group” with other students.  

Egon Schiele started working with Walburga (Wally) Neuzil in 1911; a girl who had previously modeled for Klimt. She was his muse, and they soon became lovers, living quite the bohemian lifestyle.  Schiele’s work was expressive, raw, and quite sexual. Though he is mostly known for his figurative drawings, he also did a series of works dedicated to trees and flowers. Unlike other artists of his day (and today) he regarded drawings as one of the finer art mediums because of its immediacy and ease of expression. His nudes, including self-portraits, were often engaging in the act of self-pleasure.

Many viewers of his work were unsettled by it. He was arrested for his “pornographic” work and spent 25 days in prison.  In 1914, Schiele married Edith Harms, a socially acceptable woman from a middle-class family.  He thought he could keep his relationship with Wally, but she left him immediately.

In 1915, Schiele was drafted into service for Austria. He continued to create throughout his service and displayed his work at shows (even in Germany).  His work matured greatly during the war, and he was quite prolific creating hundreds of new pieces. In 1918, Egon Schiele contracted the Spanish Influenza. Along with 20,000,000 other people, including his pregnant wife, the disease took his life and at just 28 years of age.

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