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Image Not Available for Egon Schiele
Egon Schiele
Image Not Available for Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele

Austrian, 1890–1918
BiographySchiele was born on 12 June 1890 in Tulln an der Donau, near Vienna. His talent for drawing manifested itself early: he studied with Christian Griebenkerl (1839-1916) at the traditional Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna from 1905 until 1908, during which time he also painted small landscapes indebted to the Vienna Secession. In 1907 he met Gustav Klimt, who became a close, lifelong friend and a strong influence on Schiele's art. In 1909 Schiele left the Akademie and also exhibited four paintings at the Kunstschau, the first independent exhibition of modern art in Vienna, which also included works by Kokoschka, Klimt, and van Gogh. In the same year Schiele was among the founders of the Neukunstgruppe in Vienna. Drawing mostly proletarian girls and prostitutes, in 1910 he developed a distinctive type of psychological Expressionist portrait, incorporating gaunt figures in often tortuous poses, silhouetted against stark backgrounds. A nervous, elegant line characterizes his drawings and paintings.



In 1911, Schiele moved briefly to Krumau, his mother's birthplace in Bohemia, where he created many visionary cityscapes, but was forced to leave during the summer because of local disapproval of his unorthodox lifestyle. He moved to Neulengbach, near Vienna, but in April 1912 was arrested for creating "pornographic" pictures of nude schoolgirls, and was imprisoned for twenty-four days.



In 1913 Schiele collaborated on the magazine Die Aktion, which in 1916 devoted an entire issue to his work. Numerous exhibitions followed in Munich, Vienna, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and Berlin. In 1915 Schiele married Edith Harms. Although drafted into the Austrian army and sent to Prague, he was declared unfit for military service in 1916 and assigned first to a camp in Muehling, then, in 1917, to an Army Museum in Vienna. In 1918 Schiele had his first comprehensive one-man show at the forty-ninth exhibition of the Vienna Secession and at the Kunsthaus in Zurich. On 28 October, Schiele's pregnant wife died during an influenza epidemic, which also claimed the artist on 31 October 1918.