Schiele [Hardcover]

With his graphic style, figural distortion, and defiance of conventional standards of beauty,Egon Schiele(18901918) was apioneer of Austrian Expressionismand one of the moststartling portrait paintersof the 20th century.

Mentored by Gustav Klimt, Schiele dabbled in a glittering Art Nouveau style before developing his own much moregritty and confrontational aesthetic of sharp lines, lurid shades, and mannered, elongated figures.His prolific portraits and self-portraits stunned the Viennese establishment with anunprecedented psychological and sexual intensity, favoringerotic, exposing, or unsettling posesin which he or his sitters cower on the floor, languish with legs akimbo, glower at the viewer, and thrust their genitalia into the foreground. His models are at times skeletal and sickly, at other times strong and sensual.

Many contemporaries found Schieles work to be not only ugly butmorally objectionable;in 1912, the artist was brieflyimprisoned for obscenity. Today, his oeuvre is celebrated for itsrevolutionary approach to the human figureand for its direct and particularly fervent, almost furious brand of draftsmanship. This book presents key Schiele works to introduce his short but urgent career and hisprofound contribution to the development of modern art, which reaches right through to such contemporary talents as Tracey Emin and Jenny Saville.

BAEgon Schiele was just 28 years old when he died of Spanish influenza in 1918, but with the prolific portfolio he left behind, he continues to startle and influence. This monograph explores the artists defiant, provocative, often pornographic style which shook Viennese high society and produced some of the most penetrating and haunting portraits in art history.