Egon Schiele

A Beautiful Monograph Highlighting the Expressionist Painter'sPassionate, Cutting Edge Career.Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was a passionate man--for life,for death, and most notably, for sex. Through the mediums of drawing andpainting he was able to indulge himself fully in these obsessions.Schiele's free artistic spirit shook the cultural constraints of his dayand gave rise to his famous nude self-portraits and paintings of femalenudes. Despite criticism throughout his brief career, Schiele emerged as amajor figure in the history of modern art and the development of theExpressionist movement.EGON SCHIELE, by art historian and curator Simon Wilson, is a beautifullyillustrated monograph on the artist and his work. This affordable bookdocuments the breadth of Schiele's career within his short 28-yearlifespan, from erotic nudes to peaceful landscapes, with a series of 78illustrations and accompanying text that retain the power to shock andendear audiences one hundred years later. Schiele's notorious nude figures reflect the context of his era and how hewas viewed--scandalous. He was living in a Freudian-influenced Vienna, atime when sex and human reality intertwined and the taboo topic oferoticism became more of a public, scientific discussion. His artisticapproach reflects this societal shift and Schiele's vision gave expressionto powerful feelings and anguished honesty, as seen in the controversialpaintings of women on women in Two Girls Lying Entwined and in eroticself-portraits like Eros. And even when dogged by critics and plagued byaccusations of pornography, once even thrown in jail for forcefullyemploying young girls as models, Schiele continued to approach his vocationas an artist with uncompromising intensity. In this recently revised book, Wilson examines Schiele's unique vision asan artist, as well as his less controversial work as a landscape andportrait painter. EGON SCHIELE puts his life and work in the context ofthis time, demonstrating how the painter's style of expression gave form tothe anxieties and insecurities that beset Western culture at the turn ofthe century. Today, his emotional, powerful and expressive images revealthe way Schiele defied convention, as well as illuminate his bold careerbased on the relationship between humanity, sex and life--a career thatcontinues to elicit response from worldwide audiences to this day.

Simon Wilson is Consultant Curator at Tate Britain, London.