This book traces Schiele's development as a portraitist through four principal chronological phases, from 1906 to 1918. Starting with the artist's rigorous training at the Vienna Academy, it chronicles Schiele's eventual break with academia and the emergence of his Expressionistic style. As Schiele honed his technical abilities, he gathered a coterie of patrons-many of whom he immortalized on canvas-and developed a tendency toward realism and introspection. Throughout his career Schiele tested the boundaries of traditional portraiture. Confrontational, explicitly erotic, and largely devoid of props or scenery, Schiele's portraits are seminal works of originality and deep empathy with the human condition. This volume also offers a close examination of Schiele's self-portraits and his relationship with Gustav Klimt, Schiele's gestic language in the context of contemporaneous photography and the silent film, as well as brief biographies of Schiele's subjects and transcriptions of illuminating letters pertaining to his life and work.

About the Author

Agnes Husslein-Arco is the director of the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria. Jane Kallir is co-director of the Galerie St. Etienne in New York City, the author of the catalogue raisonne Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, and the curator of numerous exhibitions on Austrian art of the early twentieth century.