Author: Reinhard Steiner
Publisher: Taschen
ISBN: 9783836504409
Binding: hardcover
Pages: 96
Format: 26 x 21 cm
Spanish Language
With his graphic style, distortion of figures and defiance of conventional ideals of beauty, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was a pioneer of Austrian Expressionism and one of the most astonishing portrait painters of the 20th century. After a brief flirtation with the brilliant Art Nouveau style of his mentor Gustav Klimt, Klimt developed his own, cruder and more aggressive aesthetic, with harsh lines, morbid tones and elongated figures. His numerous portraits and self-portraits stunned the Viennese upper class with their unprecedented psychological and sexual intensity, which favoured erotic, revealing or disturbing poses, in which the models crouched on the floor, stretched out with their legs apart, staring at the viewer and exposing their genitals. His models could be emaciated and sickly or, on the contrary, strong and sensual. Many of his contemporaries considered Schiele's work ugly and even morally questionable, and in 1912 the artist served a short sentence of
prison for obscenity.
