Egon Schiele and 'Krumlau'

In my last month in the Czech Republic, I had the chance to visit Cesky Krumlow, where the Austrian Expressionist painter Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918) lived briefly. His confrontational, spare erotic portraits and self-portraits demonstrate his superb sense of draughtmanship, which is on display in his studies of this beautifully picturesque (now UNESCO heritage status) town.































Here are some quotations from Reinhard Steiner:

The total relinquishment of a modeled background, and thus of the protective cloak of ornament, heralded a demasking of body and gesture that was gaining in force. And by concentrating on the solo human figure, Schiele proved true to the New Art Group manifesto, dispensing with Klimtian allegorizing and mythologizing and building his own foundation 'without reference to the past' or 'to tradition.'

The subjects of the pictures are not only fixed in a frozen attitude, but are also isolated from any environment, and so exposed.

In the pictures of human figures, the frontal view had a destabilising effect, causing the bodies to totter or hover in suspension, revealing them, exposing them to indiscreet scrutiny.


His spiritual interests ... were inseparable from his quest for an individual identity, and with a profound contempt for all forms of collectivisim, for 'the eternal wearers of uniforms ... the soldiers, officials, teachers, all those without a necessary existence, the manual workers, the clerics, those who want things right away, the nationalists, patriots, arithmeticians, people of status, cyphers.


In most photographs of Schiele, his hands are clenched fists, even inside his trouser pockets!