SCHIELE, EGON

SCHIELE, EGON (1890–1918), Austrian painter.

At the time of his death at age twenty-eight, Egon Schiele was considered Austria's preeminent artist. In 1910 a collector of Schiele's works observed that his "powerful originality at first repels, all the more later to captivate." His paintings and drawings of explicitly erotic nudes, including children, still have the power to disturb. An exhibition of his works was censored in the United States as recently as 1960.

Schiele's father, Adolf, of German Protestant background, served as stationmaster of a major railway junction at Tulln, eighteen miles outside of Vienna. Egon's mother, Marie Soukup Schiele, was educated in a Viennese convent. Adolf contracted syphilis from a prostitute at about the time of his marriage. Marie's first three children were stillborn, probably as a result of the disease, but eventually she gave birth to two healthy girls and a boy, Egon. (A third daughter, Elvira, died at age ten.) Adolf, who refused to seek medical treatment, entered the terminal stages of syphilis in 1902, when Egon was twelve, developing hallucinations and becoming so irrational that he burned the family's railroad bonds. His death marked the young Egon, who came to view love and death as inexorably intertwined.

Schiele showed a great gift for drawing at an early age. Despite the disapproval of his family, he spent hours outside drawing from nature, neglecting his academic studies. He could capture the essence of an object extremely quickly, in a few deft strokes, and took pencil and paper everywhere. He gained admittance to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at age sixteen, the youngest student ever admitted. Schiele found study at the academy rigid and withdrew three years later.

In about 1907 Schiele met Gustav Klimt. The older artist encouraged Schiele's career, and for a time the younger artist borrowed motifs from Klimt's oeuvre. After a few years Schiele forsook Klimt's art nouveau style in favor of expressionism, which emphasized the artist's emotional reaction to his subject. He used unnatural colors to express emotional content in such paintings as Self-Portrait with Hand to Cheek (1910). Schiele portrayed himself, often naked, in many exaggerated self-portraits. His masterful use of line to portray a subject's character is evident in his minimalist watercolor portraits of this period.

With the decline in public commissions in Vienna, artists were forced to court a few wealthy patrons. Indeed Schiele had several such patrons, but their support was sporadic. As a result he faced financial hardship, often unable to purchase canvas, paper, or paint.

At the end of 1910 Schiele withdrew from the art scene in Vienna. Influenced by the symbolists, including Arthur Rimbaud and Rainer Maria Rilke, his works became more allegorical. He again painted many self-portraits, this time with multiple images. He also depicted frail, autumnal tree trunks against a hostile void.

In the spring of 1911 Schiele moved to a small town with seventeen-year-old Valerie Neuzil, nicknamed "Wally," who served as his principal model.

In 1913 a one-man show was held in Munich, but it met with little success. He now portrayed cloaked religious figures in works such as The Hermits (1912) and Agony (1912), which suggests a cubist influence.

In 1912 Schiele experienced what proved to be a pivotal experience: he was charged with exposing minors to pornography. His real sin seems to have been using nude child models in a provincial town. He served twenty-four days for the crime and found the experience of imprisonment shattering. Following incarceration, his art became less self-centered, more mature and empathetic. His portrayals of women were less erotic. He again created many works with religious themes, including Self Portrait as St. Sebastian (1914), Holy Family (1913), and Resurrection (1913), which perhaps referred to his period of imprisonment.

In November 1914 Schiele's beloved sister Gerti, the subject of many portraits, married Anton Peschka, a painter friend of Schiele's. Egon himself began thinking of marriage and began courting Edith Harms, a seventeen-year-old girl from a middle-class family, using Wally as a chaperone. (Wally later volunteered as a Red Cross nurse in World War I and died in Dalmatia in 1917.) Schiele's somber oil entitled Death and Maiden (1915) is thought to be a portrayal of his break with Wally.

Schiele married Edith Harms on 17 June 1915. At first exempted from the draft due to a weak heart, he was later declared fit for service. He reported for military service in Prague four days after his wedding. Like other Austrian artists, Schiele obtained a series of noncombat assignments. His first, digging trenches in Vienna, allowed him time to paint a portrait of his wife, whom he portrayed as awkward, stiff, and expressionless. Afraid of being sent to the front, Schiele sought a post as "war painter" or assignment to the Army Museum. Instead he was sent to a rural post outside of Vienna. Schiele painted some poignant portraits of Russian prisoners of war, but overall 1916 was not a productive year. Die Aktion, a leading left-wing Berlin magazine, devoted an entire issue to his work.

In early 1917 Schiele was transferred back to Vienna. He developed a new style—more empathetic and objective and less self-referential. His portraits of women depicted his subjects as thoughtful and intelligent. The Family (1918) is an allegory in which Man (Schiele) watches over a pensive wife and baby. The artist was asked to organize a Secession exhibition in Vienna that prominently displayed his works, all of which were sold. Schiele was recognized as the leading painter of his generation, and commissions began to pour in. With Klimt's sudden death from a stroke, Schiele acquired the mantle of Austria's foremost artist.

In April 1918 Schiele was at last assigned to the Army Museum in Vienna, where he organized exhibitions. In the same month, Edith became pregnant. As the war ground to its inevitable conclusion, food shortages, lack of fuel, and finally, the Spanish influenza pandemic, made life in Vienna precarious. Edith became ill with the flu and died on 28 October. Schiele succumbed three days later. His professional career had lasted only ten years.

See alsoArt Nouveau; Klimt, Gustav; Modernism; Vienna.

bibliography

Comini, Alessandra. Nudes: Egon Schiele. New York, 1994.

Kallir, Jane. Egon Schiele: Life and Work. New York, 1990.

Schröder, Klaus Albrecht, and Harold Szeemann, eds. Egon Schiele and His Contemporaries: Austrian Painting and Drawing from 1900 to 1930 from the Leopold Collection, Vienna. Munich, Germany, 1989.

Whitford, Frank. Egon Schiele. New York and Toronto, 1981.

Carol P. Merriman