Art Nouveau figure “Gerti Schiele in checkered cloth” (1908/09) by Egon Schiele

The young artists who founded the so-called Neukunst group in 1909, very much in the spirit of the Secessionist movement, wanted to break with the rigid traditions of academic fine art. One of the co-founders was Egon Schiele, born on June 12, 1890, in Tulln an der Donau, who had studied at the Vienna Academy from 1906 to 1909. His early work still bears Impressionist traits and shows the influence of Gustav Klimt's Viennese Art Nouveau patterns, but from 1910 onward, Expressionist elements increasingly crept into his painting. His female nudes, in particular, are characterized by a provocative, sensual eroticism that violated the prevailing moral standards and earned him a short prison sentence in 1912.