Interesting Facts about Egon Schiele
Why was Schiele important?
Egon Schiele, an Austrian painter, is famous, or infamous, for depicting disturbing intensity, twisted bodies, and raw sexuality in his paintings, many of which are self-portraits. He was a significant 20th-century figurative painter who produced over 3,000 works on paper and roughly 300 paintings, which were generally seen as disturbing and insulting due to their frank, unashamed sensuality.
His angular lines and color combinations indicate that he was an early supporter of Austrian Expressionism, which abandoned traditional notions of beauty in favor of ugliness and heightened emotion in art. Schiele was the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna's youngest student ever. Schiele began at the Academy when he was 16 years old, and via his own shows, he met critic and journalist Arthur Roessler, who introduced him to significant collectors and benefactors.
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How many paintings did Schiele paint?
Despite the fact that Schiele's life and career were cut short - he died at the age of 28 â his output was vast. Schiele completed almost 330 oil paintings and thousands of drawings in less than ten years. His work is recognized for its ferocity and for displaying naked sexuality.
He was an incredibly talented artist as a child.
Schiele, who was born in 1890 to a station master for a father, grew up among the railway and locomotives, which influenced his love of painting at an early age. He was intrigued by trains as a child and would spend hours drawing them.
He was so engrossed in his sketching that his father, disappointed that his son didn't want to follow in his footsteps, destroyed his sketchbooks. Schiele was 15 when his father died, and his maternal uncle, who also worked on the trains, took him in. Fortunately, his uncle noticed Schiele's abilities and reluctantly allowed him to follow his creative interests.
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He allegedly had an affair with the sister of his wife.
Schiele had a strong affinity for ladies, claiming that in just eight months, he had 180 women pass through his studio. When he initially married, he solely used Edith as a model, and his technique evolved to become more lifelike, maybe as a result of the compassion and closeness he had with her.
Because Edith's body form had altered and she was no longer thin and frail, as Schiele like his models to be, he began requesting her sister, Adéle, to model for him. Later, Adéle said that her relationship with Schiele had not been as chaste as it should have been.
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT EDVARD MUNCHHe had dropped out of art school.
Schiele applied to study in Vienna's Kunstgewerbeschule in 1906, but his teachers felt after his first year that he would be better suited to the more conventional Akademie der Bildenden KĂŒnste.
After becoming disillusioned with his tutor's conservative style, he dropped school after three years. He and a group of disgruntled students, including artists Oskar Kokoschka and Max Oppenheimer, formed the Neukunstgruppe, or New Art Group, and collaborated on a number of shows over the years.
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While in the service, he painted Russian prisoners of war.
When Schiele married Edith, World War I was already in full swing, and he was forced to report for active duty just three days after their wedding. He was assigned to Prague, where Edith joined him in a hotel room while he slept with the other conscripts.
He continued to exhibit despite his military service, and he had successful displays in ZĂŒrich, Prague, and Dresden. He was given the task of guarding and escorting Russian detainees, whom he began to employ as models for his paintings. He was even given an abandoned storeroom to use as a studio by his commanding officer.
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Gustav Klimt was his mentor.
Gustav Klimt was a willing tutor to new artists, and when Schiele approached him in 1907, he took a special interest in him. Klimt, like Schiele, was chastised during his career for including erotic aspects in his work.
Klimt purchased Schiele's sketches, set up models for him, and introduced him to possible consumers. As a result, some of Schiele's earliest works bear resemblances to Klimt's; for example, Schiele's Cardinal and Nun (Caress) share the same pose as Klimt's classic The Kiss. The two went on to have a lifelong relationship, mutual admiration, and rumored love for the same woman.
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A protégé of the artist Gustav Klimt.
Schiele came to Vienna at the age of 16 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. After a year, the young art student met Gustav Klimt, whom he loved and who would go on to become his most important mentor throughout his career. In 1909, Klimt persuaded Egon Schiele to exhibit in the Vienna Kunstschau.
There, Schiele came to the work of Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh, among others. After leaving the Academy of Fine Arts in 1909, Schiele began to develop his own style as a result of his newfound independence. Egon Schiele established a style dominated by nudity, erotism, and figurative aberrations during this time.
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His patron was Gustav Klimt.
Despite Egon Schiele's well-deserved prominence, Elder of the Vienna Secession served as a mentor to him. Klimt was introduced to the Wiener WerkstÀtte (Vienna Workshops) by Gustav Klimt (shown left), a group of architects, artists, craftspeople, and merchants created by secessionists Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.
Klimt became familiar with Schiele's clientele and purchased his sketches. He also introduced Egon to models. In his time, a story about one of them caused quite a stir...Schiele was arrested on charges of "abducting and seducing" a minor.
The two artists: Klimt and Schiele were inspired by the same person.
When Schiele was 21, he met Wally Neuzil, a 17-year-old model who had previously worked for Klimt. Wally is thought to have been one of Klimt's mistresses before moving in with Schiele and starting to sit for him.
They moved to Krumau, a small village where Schiele's mother hailed from but was quickly ejected by locals who despised their bohemian lifestyle and Schiele's claimed practice of procuring underage females to pose for him.
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A love triangle existed between Gustav Klimt and Wally Neuzil.
Gustav Klimt introduced Egon Schiele, a 20-year-old artist, to a slew of other artists, gallerists, and models. Wally Neuzil, who is also said to have been Klimt's mistress, was one of them. However, Wally Neuzil and Egon Schiele relocated to Krumau, Czech Republic, in 1911.
In his work "The Hermits," Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, clad entirely in black, stand entangled, refer to this love triangle. The painting's crimson parts are supposed to be a reference to Wally Neuzil's red hair.
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His first relationship was doomed from the start.
Schiele's first great love, as far as we know, was Margarete Partonek, the girl next door, the daughter of a teacher. Despite the fact that nothing is known about her, it appears that his affections for her are still unresolved. Margarete retained six of his love notes as well as his memorial notice, according to The Guardian.
He offered his "right hand to art" and "both my hands" to "the loveliest female" in one of his letters.
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He dumped Wally in favor of marrying someone who was more socially acceptable.
The Harms sisters, Edith and Adéle, lived across the street from Schiele's Vienna studio. Schiele decided that marrying Edith, who hailed from a middle-class family and thus had a higher social standing than Wally, who came from a low family and may have worked as a prostitute in her youth, would be a good idea.
He did, however, expect to keep his friendship with Wally, and proposed that the two of them take a trip without Edith every summer. When Wally found out, he walked out on him and was never seen again. In 1915, Schiele and Edith married.
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Schiele was recruited into the army four days after his wedding
Edith Harms was seen outside Schiele's window in Hietzing, a Viennese neighborhood. He chose her over his mistress Wally Neuzil, a model, and former prostitute because she was more socially acceptable. He painted his masterpieces while guarding Russian prisoners throughout the conflict.
Schiele's army career was straightforward, and he never saw any front-line combat. While guarding Russian prisoners of war and conducting other guard duties, he was able to draw and paint. By 1917, he had dedicated himself entirely to his creative profession in Vienna. During this time, he produced a number of pieces and took part in the Secession's 49th exhibition in Vienna.
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Schiele was admitted to the Akademie fĂŒr bildenden Kunste in Vienna as the youngest student in his class (Academy of Fine Arts).
Egon was only 16 years old when he enrolled in the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts. He did not receive his graduation since he left the school three years later, dissatisfied with the traditional teaching techniques.
The Neukunstgruppe was created by Schiele and a group of like-minded students (New Art Group). Following many solo exhibits, he met Arthur Roessler, an art critic who introduced him to wealthy private collectors and art lovers.
A landscape painting was his most valuable work sold at auction.
According to Sotheby's, Egon Schiele's landscape painting "Houses with Colorful Laundry (Suburb II)" (HĂ€user mit bunter WĂ€sche), oil on canvas, 1914 is the most valuable piece of his at the sale.
It was sold for about $40 million at an Impressionist and Modern Art auction on June 22, 2011, in London.
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Schiele was a poet as well as an artist.
"I suppose every artist should be a poet," Schiele wrote in April 1918, just before his death. His writings were just as colorful, original, and expressive as his paintings. In the United Kingdom, a compilation of Schiele's poetry was just released, together with the author's artwork.
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Egon Schiele, Self-poartait (1914) and a poem Self-portrait in handwriting (1910)
Sensation
"High vast winds turned my spine to ice and I was forced to squint. On a scratchy wall I saw the entire world with all its valleys, mountains and lakes, with all the animals running around shadows of trees and the patches of sun reminded me of clouds. I strode upon the earth and had no sense of my limbs I felt so light."
He was imprisoned for 24 days.
Schiele and Wally relocated to Neulengback in 1912, where Schiele was jailed for wooing and kidnapping a young girl. Over a hundred of his drawings were deemed indecent and taken from his studio, resulting in the addition of the charge of exhibiting pornographic materials to children to his criminal record.
He was only found guilty on the last charge after spending 21 days in custody. The judge made a show of burning one of his drawings in front of him, and he was sentenced to another three days in prison. Wally stayed loyal during his sentence, delivering food and art supplies to him from behind bars.
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He died as a result of the Spanish flu outbreak.
The Spanish flu epidemic devastated Europe in the autumn of 1918, killing over 20 million people, including Schiele and his wife. Edith died first, six months pregnant at the time, and Schiele died three days later.
He was 28 years old at the time. Below is an unfinished painting of his friend and Neukunstgruppe colleague Paris von GĂŒtersloh that he left behind. Despite the fact that he was only active for a brief time, his work provided the groundwork for the Viennese Expressionist movement and inspired subsequent movements such as Abstract Expressionism.
