Degenerate art or revolutionary masterpieces? Egon Schiele's groundbreaking influence

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) , one of the most important Austrian artists of the 20th century , had a revolutionary impact on the art world with his works.

During his lifetime, he was perceived as a provocative artist and therefore controversial; he was despised by the Nazis, who banned his "degenerate art ." Only after his death was the Expressionist recognized as an exceptional talent.

Egon Schiele, who was born 133 years ago on June 12, 1890, provoked controversy throughout his life. Even today, there are vehement supporters of his art as well as those who condemn it as pornographic.

Until his death in 1918, Schiele was only known as an artist in Vienna and among some German speakers. However, he is now considered a major figure of Expressionism, and his paintings fetch high prices on the art market .

Nevertheless, his work has not been fully deciphered to this day, as Klaus-Albrecht Schroeder emphasizes – an expert on Schiele's works and director of the Vienna Albertina.

His expressive power and unique style challenged the traditional conventions of his time. Schiele's groundbreaking influence can be discovered Belvedere Museum or the Leopold Museum Gustav Klimt and other Viennese artists .

Egon Schiele, alongside Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, considered one of the most important representatives of Austrian Expressionism. He broke away from the influences of Art Nouveau and Symbolist elements that characterized the Vienna Secession and developed a style with realistic aspects that was scandalous at the time.

His oeuvre not only reveals his own fascinating life, but also the social and artistic changes of his time.

Whether one considers his art "degenerate" or revolutionary masterpieces is a matter of personal opinion, as Schiele's artistic legacy is both controversial and fascinating. In Tulln, Egon Schiele's hometown, there is also an exhibition about his life and works, offering insight into his development as an artist and highlighting his close relationship with Wally Neuzil , his muse and lover.

Egon Schiele's influence and importance are undeniable, and his works will continue to shape the art world.

The controversy surrounding degenerate art and revolutionary masterpieces

Egon Schiele, a prominent Austrian artist of the 20th century, has provoked both admiration and controversy with his works.

His avant-garde depictions of the human body and his fashionable style have had a lasting influence on the art world. His works, often erotic in nature , have historically been considered obscene and immoral.

Egon Schiele's life was marked by controversy. His intense artistic expression and unconventional behavior often brought him into conflict with the society of his time. He was criticized for the sexual themes in his works and his frank depiction of the human body.

Schiele could also count on a dedicated group of supporters, including his muse Wally Neuzil, who served as inspiration for many of his masterpieces. The art world was transformed by Schiele's expressive and innovative approach to portraiture and the human body.

His use of bold colors and daring lines brought a new perspective to traditional representations. Schiele's influence on the Viennese art scene was significant and laid the foundation for Expressionism and other modern art movements.

Viennese Modernism, whose most famous exponents include Schiele, was characterized by the tension between “aesthetics and darkness ,” the central theme of the 2018 thematic year in Vienna. Schiele's works tend toward darkness, as they experimentally explore the abysses and shallows of the self, which was in crisis around 1900, through their sometimes extreme facial expressions and mysterious gestures.

In 1910, Emperor Franz Joseph expressed his horror at a female nude by Egon Schiele:

“This is truly terrible.”

If the artist had had the opportunity, he might have replied to the Emperor: “Even the most sensual work of art harbors a sacred meaning!” – at least that is what Schiele noted in a letter in 1911 ( Sonntagsblatt ).

In the spring of 1918, the critic Arnim Friedemann wrote in the "Wiener Abendpost" about the enfant terrible of classical modernism:

Schiele most enjoyed painting and drawing the ultimate vice and utter depravity, woman as a primal herd animal,
stripped of all inhibitions of morality and shame. His art—and it is art!—does not smile, it grins at us in a horrifying distortion.

As part of Nazi cultural policy, numerous works by him were confiscated.

The research unit “Degenerate Art” at the Institute of Art History of the Free University of Berlin has compiled an inventory listing a total of 23 works by Egon Schiele that were confiscated during the Third Reich.

Of the confiscated objects, 17 came from the Museum Folkwang and five from other German museums – the exact provenance of one work was unknown. The research center gives August 25, 1937, as the exact date of the confiscation ( database “Degenerate Art” ).

The Life of Egon Schiele – A Short Biography

Childhood, early imprinting and artistic training

Egon Schiele was born on June 12, 1890, in Tulln, a town near Vienna. His life and works are closely linked to the Austrian capital.

Schiele grew up in a world of unbelievable hypocrisy . His father was a station commander; to the children, he must have seemed like an emperor: everyone danced to his tune. He had 40 employees, a very strict hierarchical structure. He barked orders and, of course, barked orders within the family as well. But Schiele must also have sensed that this regime, this etiquette, this life at the station wasn't the whole truth.

The fact that the father repeatedly travels to Vienna; that he repeatedly does things that fall outside these labels; that his father regularly visits prostitutes, which we can assume, should not have escaped young Egon's notice.

In 1905, when Egon was just fourteen years old, a tragic turn of events occurred in his life: his father died of syphilis. Amidst this painful loss, the young Egon Schiele sought solace and fulfillment in art.

Even at the tender age of two, he was drawing trains and landscapes, while his art teacher, Ludwig Karl Strauch, encouraged him to the best of his ability at school. With his support, the talented Egon even dared to apply to the renowned Vienna Academy of Fine Arts – with great success: at the age of sixteen, he was accepted there and was able to further develop his artistic talents.

Here he studied painting and drawing, but was frustrated by the conservatism of the school.

Klimt as a mentor

In 1907 he met Gustav Klimt, who encouraged him and influenced his work. Klimt and Schiele quickly formed a mentor-mentee relationship that would have a major impact on the young artist's early development.

Klimt exerted his influence on Schiele not only in the studio, but also by introducing Schiele to patrons, models and the work of other artists – such as Vincent van Gogh , Edvard Munch and Jan Toorop – to whom Schiele was very close despite his great admiration.

Through Klimt, Schiele was also introduced Wiener Werkstätte modern art styles of the time.

In 1908, when Schiele was eighteen years old, he took part in his first exhibition, a group exhibition in Klosterneuburg, a small town north of Vienna.

Protest and the New Art Group

The following year, Schiele and some fellow students left the academy in protest, citing the school's conservative teaching methods and its failure to adopt more forward-looking artistic practices that were widespread throughout Europe.

As part of this rebellion, Schiele founded the Neukunstgruppe , which consisted of other young, dissatisfied artists who left the academy.

The new group wasted no time and held several public exhibitions throughout Vienna, while Schiele explored new forms of painterly expression, incorporating distortions and jagged contours, as well as a darker color palette than that favored by the more decorative and elaborate Art Nouveau style.

Essentially, Schiele gradually distanced himself from the style popularized by Klimt, although the two men remained close until Klimt's death in early 1918. If the content of Schiele's work is any indication, it seems that mentor and mentee shared an insatiable appetite for women.

On the occasion of the first exhibition of the Neukunstgruppe in 1909 at the Piska Salon in Vienna, Schiele met the art critic and writer Arthur Roessler , who became friends with him and wrote about his work with great admiration.

In 1910, a long-lasting friendship began with the collector Heinrich Benesch . By this time, Schiele had developed a personal expressionist style for portraits and landscapes and received a number of portrait commissions from the Viennese intelligentsia .

Scandals in Vienna and allegorical self-portraits

While Schiele's work scandalized Viennese society, he simultaneously sold many of his explicit paintings to private collectors as newspapers criticized his work.

This development of explicit depictions of female and male genitalia in art is a phenomenon that could only have occurred in Vienna around 1900. The city has been rocked by scandals for some time, and public discussions about the boundaries of art are ubiquitous.

Ladies from higher social circles modestly covered their legs and the necklines of their dresses. Artists like Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka , with their explicit depictions of naked women, the double standards of this Danube metropolis.

Musicians like Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg boldly cross the border into modernity; Arthur Schnitzler's dramas shake the foundations of society, while Sigmund Freud speaks publicly for the first time about female sexuality.

Although Schiele did not know the psychoanalyst personally, all of Vienna is aware of Freud's spectacular findings.

Egon Schiele was familiar with this double standard from his childhood. In contrast to the beauty ideal of the Vienna Secession, he depicted the ugly and distorted. The limbs of his young women and men are unnaturally long and emaciated, while their genitals are presented in an inviting and colorful manner.

Seeking isolation, Schiele left Vienna in 1911 to live in several small villages; he increasingly focused on self-portraits and allegories of life, death and sex, and produced erotic watercolors .

The transition from childhood to adulthood, in both girls and boys, particularly fascinated the then 20-year-old artist. His works often focused on the theme of self-discovery during puberty. This artistic focus led to a scandal in 1912 in Neulengbach, a small town in the Vienna Woods.

Schiele's early studies were particularly controversial because he used children as nude models and depicted pubescent girls in implicitly erotic situations.

The following year was of crucial importance for Schiele, both personally and artistically. In addition to participating in numerous group exhibitions – in Budapest, Cologne, and Vienna – Schiele was invited by the Hans Goltz Gallery in Munich to show his work alongside members of the Expressionist group "Der Blaue Reiter" (The Blue Rider) , including Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc .

Schiele's works at this time included his most famous Self-Portrait with Physalis (1912), a captivating study of the artist, his face and other features full of lines, scars and subtle deformations.

The Goltz exhibition brought Schiele his greatest attention to date and revealed to the public his rich use of personal symbolism and dark allegories.

Arrest for underage models

Also in 1912, while Schiele was living in the Austrian town of Neulengbach, he was arrested in his studio and imprisoned for twenty-four days, accused of kidnapping and raping a twelve-year-old girl.

This charge was eventually dropped, and he was convicted of exposing children to erotic images . Police had confiscated 125 of his "degenerate" works, and in a symbolic gesture, the judge burned one of his drawings in the courtroom (the work, depicting a young girl naked from the waist down, had previously been displayed on the wall of his studio).

The incident had a significant impact on Schiele, as he subsequently stopped using children as models, although the morbidity and sexual explicitness of his work – particularly his drawings – had apparently increased after his release from prison.

Military service, marriage, tragedies and the end of life

In 1913, the Hans Goltz Gallery in Munich held Schiele's first solo exhibition. A solo exhibition of his work took place in Paris in 1914.

His private life also took a turn when, in 1915, he wrote to a friend: "I intend to marry, and in a way that benefits me," and proposed marriage to Edith Harms, a young woman with good social standing.

Although he hoped to continue his relationship with Wally Neuzil, she left him when she learned of his engagement. This loss is clearly expressed "Death and the Maiden"

Four days after his wedding, Schiele was finally drafted into military service. However, he never experienced actual combat during the entire war and was instead allowed to continue practicing and exhibiting his art wherever he was stationed.

Inspired by his war travels, Schiele created a series of landscape and cityscapes , which lacked the artist's usual exaggerated contours.

In 1917, Schiele returned to Vienna and worked hard. That same year, he and Klimt jointly founded the city's Kunsthalle, a new exhibition space intended to encourage Austrian artists to remain in their homeland. The following year brought the artist both poignant successes and tragedies in many forms.

In February, his mentor and friend Klimt suffered a stroke and pneumonia. Just one month later, the Vienna Secession held its 49th annual exhibition (1918) and dedicated the main exhibition hall to Schiele's work, which resulted in a great commercial success.

He died a few months later at the age of 28 on October 31, 1918, in Vienna from the Spanish flu, the same disease his wife had succumbed to three days earlier. In the three days between their deaths, Schiele made several sketches of his deceased wife.

In his final moments, the young Austrian artist Egon Schiele experienced an extraordinary phenomenon: On his deathbed at the end of October 1918, as his strength increasingly declined, he whispered the words:

After my death, people will undoubtedly praise me and admire my art.”

The unique style of Egon Schiele

Schiele's art has the ability to portray people in their time in a unique and moving way. This style still deeply resonates in our visual and emotional world of the 21st century.

So far, there is nothing comparable that can stage the body so skillfully – be it as a battlefield, playground or crime scene.

It is an artful self-staging in which every emotional expression, from intense despair to apathetic melancholy, is brought to life with color, broken form or lines – like a sign of decay or a seeping stain on a surface.

He was obsessed with thighs and buttocks, with female and male genitalia, with heterosexual, homosexual, and lesbian embraces. He drew the genders and colored them like overripe fruit. And he depicted himself as a saint, naked with an obscenely erect penis. The bodies are painfully thin against empty backgrounds that become abysses.

Around 1914, his painted figures seem to stagger in a trance, without orientation or purpose. This is due to the “geometry” from which Schiele created his figures. For example, he constructed a reclining woman from two triangles. Even her genitals have triangular shapes.

Schiele's depictions of the obsessive, the abysmal, and the morbid, rendered through pure drawing, appear even more magical today than ever before – yet simultaneously profoundly human. This almost voluptuous contortion of the body reveals vague influences of Symbolism and Viennese Art Nouveau ; nowadays, this is seen as a painter's search for identity – not so much as the work of an early-gifted prodigy.

The depiction of the naked body in Schiele's works

The depiction of the body in Schiele's works plays a central role in his oeuvre and contributes to his controversial reputation as an artist.

In his works, he breaks with traditional ideals of beauty and depicts the body in its authentic and often unembellished form. Schiele's nude drawings, in which he reveals human anatomy in detail and without restraint, are particularly well-known.

He avoids idealized proportions and depicts the body in distorted perspective to reflect the inner states and emotions of the people portrayed. Schiele focuses on the individuality of each body, thus demonstrating his fascination with the uniqueness of human existence.

A well-known work by Schiele that illustrates this approach is the “Portrait of Wally Neuzil” from 1912. In this painting, he shows Wally Neuzil, his lover and muse, in a self-confident pose with her upper body exposed.

The depiction of the body in this work is honest and unflinching, which was considered provocative and scandalous at the time. Schiele's artistic portrayal of the body, however, was groundbreaking for the modern art movement and influenced many artists of his generation.

The depiction of the body in Schiele's works is a central theme that underscores his revolutionary influence on the art world. His works continue to provoke discussions about the limits of representing the body and the meaning of beauty in art .

Enigmatic gestures and religious staging patterns

The exhibition “Freedom of the Self” at the Museum Georg Schäfer in Schweinfurt in 2018 made it clear that Schiele was a spiritual person – albeit not in the traditional religious sense.

The exhibition in Schweinfurt was divided into three areas: self- and body representation, emotional world and subjectivity.

The exhibition featured important works of art, such as Schiele's "Self-Portrait with Bowed Head" from 1912 (see image above) . In this painting, the artist forms a V with the index and middle fingers of his right hand. Is this a possible allusion to the frequently used blessing gesture of Christ in Byzantine art?

The art historian Stefan Kutzenberger ( as reported in the Protestant Sunday paper ) points out in the accompanying catalogue that this gesture by the painter may represent a reference to Christ Pantocrator in the Chora Church in Istanbul.

According to Kutzenberger, Schiele's gesture could thus be a symbol of artistic charisma – thereby impressively updating the romantic image of the artist as priest in the years around 1900, or so writes the expert on the subject.

He also offers another explanation: Schiele may have experimented with his friend Dominik Osen, a painter and mime artist, to determine which expressionist poses had the greatest effect – however, this explanation does not exclude the one mentioned above.

Schiele, a Catholic who married in 1915 according to Protestant rites, frequently employed religious staging patterns in his self-portraits. Kutzenberger emphasized that Schiele's depictions as a saint, prophet, preacher, herald, or anarchist reveal nothing about his own person or actual life story.

Rather, they are the result of social attributions and consciously played role models – thus he is in good company with later emerging postmodern discourses.

Schiele's double self-portraits testify to his profound engagement with occultism and spiritualism , which were fashionable around 1900. In a letter to his sister, he describes a remarkable spiritualist incident:

Today I had a truly fascinating spiritualist experience. I was awake, but captivated by the spirit that had announced itself in a dream before I woke up. As long as it spoke to me, I was frozen and speechless

Schiele's artworks often show traces of Christian iconography . One example is the oil painting " Mother with Two Children II" from 1915, which draws on the Pietà type of the Middle Ages.

A somewhat different kind of Christmas image is “Dead Mother I” (1910), which depicts a deceased mother with her hand protectively placed over her child. Schiele himself considered this oil painting one of his best works.

Important works of art by Egon Schiele

Despite his short life and the destruction of some of his works during the Nazi era, Schiele left us an impressive wealth of works.

At this point, we would like to present and briefly explain six of the most important works from his extensive oeuvre – in chronological order.

Portrait of Gerti Schiele, 1909

This is one of Schiele's numerous portraits of his younger sister Gerti , the artist's favorite model in his early career and the member of his family with whom he was closest.

This early portrait, painted by Gerti as a teenager, shows both the strong stylistic connection between Schiele's work and that of Klimt, as well as the departure from his mentor's style.

In her pose and the jewelry, which consists of a series of flat patches with gold and silver accents, Gerti's figure is reminiscent of Klimt's works such as the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907).

But unlike its Klimt predecessor, the painting is less decorative and more static and soft, as if Schiele were casting his subject in clay. Furthermore, Schiele replaced Klimt's richly shimmering, gold-dominated palette with more muted colors, resulting in a painting that appears desiccated and suggests decay rather than growth.

Media : Oil, silver, gold-bronze paint and pencil on canvas

Current location : Museum of Modern Art, New York

Seated Male Nude (Self-Portrait), 1910

Schiele's self-portraits are exceptional not only because of the frequency with which the artist depicted himself, but also because of the way in which he did so: eroticized depictions in which he often naked in very revealing poses – male self-portraits that are practically unparalleled in this respect in the Western art world.

In this drawing, the artist has created an intense and almost frightening vision of himself: emaciated, with bright red eyes, deformed legs and no feet, his body completely exposed, but his face partially hidden, perhaps suggesting a feeling of shame – a twisted pose that, as many authors suspect, is due to the significant influence of modern dance.

Characteristic of the expressionist style that Schiele increasingly practiced at this time, he expresses his fear through lines and contours, as well as through skin that appears worn and exposed to rough elements.

Media : Black chalk, watercolor and gouache on paper

Current location : Leopold Museum, Vienna

Self-portrait with physalis, 1912

This is perhaps Schiele's most famous self-portrait. In this work, created during a period when Schiele participated in numerous exhibitions, he looks directly at the viewer, and his expression conveys confidence in his artistic talent.

Although Schiele uses fewer distortions than in other self-portraits, the painting refuses to idealize its subject and features scars and other lines characteristic of the contoured nature of the artist's drawing style.

The painting was exhibited in Munich in 1912 alongside works by several other Expressionist artists and has a companion portrait depicting his then-lover, Wally Neuzil (the Wally portrait was stolen by the Nazis from the home of a Jewish Austrian, only to be saved). It returned to Vienna in 2010 after a twelve-year legal battle.

Today it serves as a “flagship” for the Leopold Museum in Vienna, which houses the world’s largest Schiele collection.

Media : Oil on canvas

Current location : Leopold Museum, Vienna

The Hermits, 1912

This rare double portrait , one of the most allegorical works in Schiele's oeuvre, depicts Schiele and Klimt side by side, almost as a single entity. Despite their close relationship and all their similarities, Schiele spent a large part of his career trying to free himself from Klimt's influence.

In Hermits, both men wear their characteristic long black kaftans, a garment for which Klimt was known and which Schiele, perhaps as an homage, used in his own work. Schiele is no friend of modesty and positions Klimt in the background, blind and largely hidden, as if being consumed by the younger artist.

The resulting form resembles a single dark figure and suggests that the self-assured successor Schiele is taking over the mantle of the old master. The hermit motif also recalls Schiele's existential view of the artist as a figure on the margins of society.

Media : Oil on canvas

Current location : Leopold Museum, Vienna

Death and the Maiden, 1915

In this painting, one of Schiele's most complex and haunting works, the female figure, gaunt and tattered, clings to the male figure of death, while surrounded by an equally tattered, quasi-surreal landscape.

As everywhere in his work, Schiele combines the personal with the allegorical in this composition – in this case by turning to a theme that originates from the medieval concept of the Dance of Death, which reached its peak in 15th-century German art.

"Death and the Maiden" was created around the time Schiele separated from his long-time lover Wally Neuzil and a few months before he married his new lover Edith Harms. The painting commemorates the end of his affair with Neuzil and seems to depict this separation as the death of true love.

Interestingly, the way in which Schiele's figures are almost consumed by their clothing and the abstracted surroundings suggests the portraiture of Klimt, who also placed his subjects in undecipherable environments.

Media : Oil on canvas

Current location : Austrian Gallery, Belvedere, Austria

Town among Greenery (The Old City III), 1917

Although his art focused on the human figure, Schiele – who had the opportunity to travel throughout Europe during his career – also felt drawn to the countryside and cities.

In fact, the artist's paintings depicting the landscape and his home city of Vienna constitute a significant part of his oeuvre. This painting was partly inspired by his mother's hometown of Krumau , where he lived briefly in 1911.

Schiele's landscapes – although often devoid of people – exhibit fascinating parallels to his figurative work. His frequent use of the bird's-eye view in his landscapes is reminiscent of one of the most radical elements of his portraiture: his tendency to depict his subjects from above.

This painting contains further characteristic elements of Schiele's style, particularly the use of bold outlines and sharp contours. What distinguishes this work from his portraiture is the artist's use of color and palette, for which Schiele was not previously known.

Media : Oil on canvas

Current location : Neue Galerie, New York

How much does a work of art by Egon Schiele cost?

A Schiele drawing, which today has an average value of €100,000, was sold for only 50 schillings back then – not even €4. Its estimated value was incredibly low during his lifetime.

Rudolf Leopold scoured the art world for the artist's works, acquired them, and brought them together for a spectacular world tour.

Since the 1970s, Schiele's art has experienced a renaissance on the market, and his paintings and drawings now fetch between 400,000 and 27 million euros auction

Literature and illustrated books about the Austrian artistic genius

A standard work on Schiele with a representative character – a treasure for collectors and fans

Schiele's work is among the most important works of early modernism after 1900 and is both classic and timelessly relevant in its sensual-corporeal existentialism.

Now, almost a century later, the renowned Taschen publishing house a lavish volume: high-quality paper, elegant linen cover with gold embossed lettering – containing all 221 paintings from the years 1909-1918 as well as 146 drawings.

This comprehensive art book impresses in every respect with nine chapters that combine images and text. We witness Schiele's extraordinary talent and rebellious nature as we experience his intense aesthetic of transformation – a passionate blend of insatiable curiosity and provocative sexual energy.

Furthermore, the book gives us insights into Schiele's war paintings from 1914 to 1918: human bodies, portraits and broken natural scenes like open maps – injured, disfigured, tortured and reassembled.

The art historian and experienced museum professional Tobias G. Natter , who later grew up in the same region as Schiele, has created an impressive standard work on Schiele . This work is of inestimable value to collectors and fans of the artist.

The hefty picture book is as a hardcover edition from Amazon .

Further book recommendations:

• Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection, Vienna; by Rudolf Leopold, Elisabeth Leopold
• Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele (1965), Guggenheim Exhibition Catalogue / by Thomas Messer
• Egon Schiele, by Klaus Albrecht Schroder
• Egon Schiele, by Erwin Mitsch

Sources, references and further information:

• The ART STORY , Egon Schiele , https://www.theartstory.org/artist/schiele-egon/
• Frankfurter Rundschau , The Body, a Battlefield , https://www.fr.de/kultur/kunst/koerper-schlachtfeld-11032975.html
• SWR2 MANUSCRIPT , The artist Egon Schiele “Enfant terrible” of classical modernism – By Martina Conrad
• Sunday paper of the Evangelical Press Association for Bavaria (EPV), Schweinfurt Museum presents Egon Schiele's exhibition “Freedom of the Self”, https://www.sonntagsblatt.de/artikel/kultur/schweinfurter-museum-zeigt-egon-schieles-ausstellung-freiheit-des-ichs