Egon Schiele
1890-1918
Born at Tulln on the Danube, Schiele studied at the Vienna Academy of Art under Christian Griepenkerl from 1906. He then joined the Wiener Werkstatte and in 1909 left the Academy and participated in the Hagenbund exhibitions with the Neukunstgruppe. At this time his work was under the influence of Klimt. Between 1909 and 1913 he had matured his own style, which was Expressionist in character although Schiele was not formally within the Expressionist movement, and by 1914 he was painting in a flat, highly individual and somewhat mannered style. During the war years he was employed as a War Artist. In 1918 he showed at the 49th exhibition of the Vienna Secession and for the first time achieved international acclaim, dying a few months afterwards of Spanish influenza. A large retrospective exhibition of Schiele's work was staged at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 1975 and revealed to critics the outstanding quality of his draughtsmanship and his sensitive gift for portraiture - aspects of his talent which had earlier sometimes been overshadowed by the preciosity which he often cultivated. As stated in an appreciation by Michael Ratcliffe: 'In a mere eight years of activity he had established himself as one of the most spontaneously gifted draughtsmen of all time - he drew with the speed of a man writing a letter full of news - and he he left behind a body of paintings, drawings and watercolours which, though informed by the obsessive self-regard of the first Freudian age, is wholly individual and could never be mistaken for that of anyone else.' During the 1970s Schiele's work came to be more and more highly valued both for its confident mastery and economy of line and for the compassion which infuses his repulsive images of humanity.
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