Egon Schiele: Nudes

Egon Schiele was born in 1890 in the small Austrian town of Tulln to a middle-class family of civil servants. Even as a young schoolboy, Schiele sketched prolifically. Egon Schiele's career was one of short brilliance. Schiele's work as an artist centers around the Viennese Secession and Expressionist movements. Despite his short life, Schiele was surprisingly productive. Before succumbing to influenza in 1918 at the age of twenty-eight, he created over three hundred oil paintings and several thousand works on paper. The human figure was Schiele's greatest muse. The nude is certainly Schiele's most powerful subject matter, both in paintings and drawings. 

Here at Artsper, we have felt particularly inspired by Egon Schiele's self-portraiture. The self-portraits in his large series of watercolors and paintings produced between 1910 and 1918 are known by the popular title of Grimacing Self-portraits. They are searing, psychologically complex images that have become etched upon the minds of all those who see them. The artist's emaciated and tortured figure, bony and angular, is drawn by the taut pencil lines. Schiele grimaces wildly, with his large, dark, menacing eyes, open mouth and spiky hair. Some have described the artist's pose as reminiscent of the crucified Christ, with his arm awkwardly stretched and bent sharply at the elbow. The color palette is limited to shades of brown, with only certain parts of the body such as the mouth, nipples, navel, and genitals tinged with red. Today Tracey Emin and others have continued in a nude artistic tradition that Egon Schiele developed at the turn of the 20th century. Explore nude artwork inspired by Egon Schiele's grimacing series here…