Egon Schiele is an iconic artist from the 20th century and was extremely important in the development of Austrian expressionism. He is most well known for his nude paintings and images of people masturbating which caused a lot of controversy at the time.
Schiele was a protege of Gustav Klimt, you can see the direct influence on his work. Above is an example of Klimt's work, you can see a similarity in colour pallet and general style, the flushed cheeks of the person for example is something you often see in Schiele's work.
I found a brief timeline of the main parts of his life online to research into further.
12th June 1890 - Egon Schiele was born, his father worked for the Austrian state railways and was in charge of the station in Tulin.
1901- Schiele was sent away to Kerms then Klosterneuburg in northern Vienna.
1904 - Schiele's family followed him to Klosterneuburg, shortly after his father died of syphilis.
1906 - He attended the Vienna academy of arts and crafts but left 3 years later finding the work too conservative and traditional. Upon leaving he formed the ''Neue Kunstgruppe'' (new art group).
1907 - Schiele met Gustav Klimt, a good friend and inspiration.
1910 - Egon Schiele had written that everything was 'living dead'
1911 - Egon Schiele met Wally Neuzil, she was seventeen. She became his model, friend and eventually lover.
1912 - He was put in prison for 24 days after being falsely accused for seducing a minor, the charge was dropped but he was found guilty of ''disseminating pornographic art'' to children.
1915 - Egon Schiele married Edith Harms. He ended his 4 year relationship with Wally. They never met again and Wally never married. Wally joined the red cross as a nurse and later died of scarlet fever.
31 October 1918, Vienna - Egon Schiele died at the age of 28 from the Spanish Influenza.
At the time of his death he was Austrias most eminent artist, his feelings and sexuality exploding onto paper.
These are very basic facts about his life and I wanted to explore further his short and interesting life. (file:///Users/mac1/Downloads/Sexuality%20under%20the%20shadow%20of%20death%20a%20psychoanalytic%20exploration%20of%20the%20art%20and%20life%20of%20Egon%20Schiele.pdf)
I found this online book called “Sexuality under the shadow of death: a psychoanalytic exploration of the
life and art of Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918) ”, I took a look through it to give me a more in depth view of his life and why his work had such an impact on people and why he painted the things he did.
Schiele was born into a strange time, just after the first world war things were confusing and contradictory ''Life was felt to be infused with the inevitability of mortality and a
preoccupation with death.''(Bettelheim 1991). You can see a clear connection to this idea of an obsession with death in his work.
The book talks about how large figures such as Freud in his works, Hofmannsthal in literature and in painting Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele they expressed their feelings about this death obsession. In all of these peoples work there was a really obvious connection between death and sex. A quote from this being ''Sex and Death were also found to a very marked degree in the work of Vienna’s greatest artists of the period, most notable Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Schiele, in particular was pre-occupied and almost obsessively driven by both. It was he who transformed
his own life into allegories and plunged the often painful depth of the intricacies of male and female relationships.
A much more interesting fact about Schiele is that he apparently started drawing at 18 months. He was obsessed with the railway his Father worked at and filled sketchbooks with drawings of the trains.
He was a middle child and the only boy, his parents rested a lot on his shoulders to be successful. To his parents disappointment he failed to do well academically and pursued his artistic inclinations.
Schiele's father knew about his Syphilis for a long time but had no symptoms so he refused treatment. Before he died he went mad, for example he insisted the table be laid for imaginary guests and burned all the families stocks leaving them destitute after his death. Egon was 14 when he died and most definitely affected greatly by it.
At 16 he became the youngest student admitted to the Vienna academy of fine arts. This was in 1906, the same year another hopeful Adolf Hitler was turned away and later went on to passionately hate expressionism.
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