Wanderlust Collective

Inside the Mind of: Egon Schiele

OCT 12/The Wanderlust Collective/

Art, Artist Spotlight, Inspiration

When I study artist’s works from the past, I always research what their life was like. What made them paint the genre they chose? What were their interests? I found Egon Schiele’s works to be fascinating, because of the bold emotional content.

But why did he paint this way?

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. He grew up around locomotives and railways. His father destroyed his sketchbooks because he did not want his son to become an artist. Instead he wanted his son to become an engineer like him. Imagine having a passion for art at this young age, and no support from your own father.

Schiele’s father Adolf died of syphilis when Egon was only fifteen years old. His father’s death marked a dark cloud over Egon’s art, and life. Schiele started an intense, almost incestuous relationship with his sister Gertrude. He became obsessed with sex, death and illness.

Egon became a ward of his maternal uncle who saw potential with his art and helped Egon pursue his art career.

In 1907 Schiele sought out the famous art nouveau artist Gustav Klimt who was the founder of Vienna Secession. Klimt took interest in the young Egon, bought his drawings, and introduced him to collectors. Gustav pushed Schiele and got him to exhibit his work at the 1909 Vienna Kuntschau. Schiele met other notable artists such as Edvard Munch, and Vincent Van Gogh.

Some of Egon’s earlier works started to show similarities to Klimt’s, for example the pose of Schiele’s “Cardinal and Nun (Caress) is similar to Klimt’s “The Kiss.”

In later years, Egon distanced himself from the ornate Art Nouveau and preferred dark, emotional art focusing on the intensity of human psychology. Schiele’s emotional and psychological works are known for their figurative distortions, linework, unconventional application, and application of color. His elongated his figures on purpose, with no ornate quality, and presented them alone as if they’re rising from out of a void.

“I was in love with everything- I wanted to look with love at the angry people so that their eyes would be forced to respond; and I wanted to bring gifts to the envious and tell them that I am worthless.”

Egon Schiele

In 1912 Schiele was arrested for abducting a young girl. Over a hundred of his drawings that were considered pornagraphic were taken from his studio. A judge later dropped the charges of seduction and abduction but convicted Egon of exhibiting erotic works in places that children could access. He ended up spending 24 days in jail.

Schiele avoided having to serve in World War 1 for almost a year, but then three days after his wedding, authorities called him to active duty in the army. His wife followed him to Prague, the city where he was stationed. Because of his heart condition Egon received a desk job as a clerk at a prisoner of war camp. There he ended up drawng and painting prisoners.

In 1918 the Spanish flu pandemic hit Vienna. His wife Edith was pregnant and died of the flu on October 28, 1918. Egon Schiele died three days later. He was only twenty eight years old.