Egon Schiele: The Last Years

Little-known late works from a painter whose art came to epitomize Viennese modernism

Published with Leopold Museum, Vienna.

Austrian artist Egon Schiele is known above all through his expressionist paintings and drawings, primarily made between 1910 and 1913/14, in which he expressed the inner turmoil of an entire generation in his depictions of the human figure. His later works following 1914, which differ markedly from his earlier ones, are less well known.
This volume chronicles the final four years of output from Egon Schiele, highlighting these later, less well-known works, in which he processed private and historical events from 1914 onward, in a style differing distinctly from his earlier works. His lines became more measured, flowing and organic, and his figures filled out and more realistic. Personal and historical events from the year 1914--the outbreak of war, his marriage to Edith Harms and the tedium of army life--clearly had a profound effect on his artistic output, leading to a significant shift in his style. Among other things, his wife Edith Schiele’s rarely seen and little-known diary (1915-18), in which she recorded her experiences, thoughts and feelings during these difficult times, is published in full in this catalog.
Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) developed an anti-academic style of rendering figures, which are only rarely shown head-on or in full length, appearing contorted by their compositional arrangement. After brief service in the army during World War I, Schiele died of influenza on October 31, 1918.