Egon Schiele. The Paintings - Tobias G. Natter - English Book - Taschen

After Egon Schiele (1890–1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model Gustav Klimt , he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a passionate provocateur , this didn’t prove to be too big a challenge. His haggard, overstretched figures , extreme depiction of sexuality and self-portraits, in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between brilliance and madness , had none of the decorative quality of Klimt’s hymns of love, sexuality and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele’s work spoke of a brutal honesty , one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society. Although his works were later defamed as “degenerate” and for a time were almost forgotten altogether, they influenced generations of artists —from Günter Brus and Francis Bacon to Tracey Emin . Today, his then misunderstood oeuvre continues to fetch exorbitant prices on the international art market. This monograph features the paintings and drawings that retrace the fertile last decade of Schiele’s life . These works are accompanied by essays introducing his life and oeuvre, situating the Austrian master in the context of European Expressionism and charting his extraordinary legacy.