Customer Reviews

The Art of Egon Schiele

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I am fond of Egon Schiele (1890-1918) as an epitome of the modern young dead artist. Egon's father died on the night of December 31, 1904, to January 1, 1905. Egon began studies in the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in the fall of 1906. The bare bones of his biography appear by year on pages 7-9 of THE ART OF EGON SCHIELE by Erwin Mitsch. The second edition (1988) is a big book, first published in English in 1975, translated from the German by W. Keith Haughan. Erwin Mitsch began researches for this book in 1968, while organizing a Schiele exhibition for the Albertina, Vienna. Much of the information in this book is based on the critical catalogues of Schiele's work compiled by O. Kallir and R. Leopold. Many private collectors of his work wish to remain anonymous, but a portrait which appears as Plate 77 in this work is usually on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

There is no index in this book, but information about particular pictures can be located in the captions for the photographs on pages 10-15, in the margins of the Introduction on pages 17-50, in Notes on pages 51-57, as captions for black and white Fig. 1 through Fig. 76 on pages 65-94, and in the List of Plates on pages 257-264. Very little information appears by the 80 Plates on pages 95-255. Some posters which reproduce striking work by Schiele are shown in black and white on pages 21, 30, 37, 43 (Title page of the weekly journal "Die Aktion" in 1916), and 47 (1918 Exhibition of the Vienna Secession).

The Plates include some sketches and paintings with minimal paint. Plate 35, Self-Portrait (1912), has dark hair and shoulders, but the remainder of his suit is merely suggested by thin lines. Plate 16, The Dancer Moa (1911) mainly shows her eyes under the line of her hat, lips, fingers, wrists, and forearms. She is even hiding a few fingers in the folds of her dress, if you interpret a few lines as her dress. Plate 33, Autumn Tree in Movement (1912) looks like a concrete question mark with cracked concrete for branches and very few brown spots for leaves, but it's really oil on a 80 x 80.5 cm canvas, marked "Winterbaum" on the stretcher. It was in the collection of Dr. Rudolf Leopold, Vienna, and it might be in a few other books, but I have not studied my other books lately. I know I have seen more modern collections with much more color, and some of the figures in black and white in this book are worth seeing in color. But if you want a big book with a wrap-around cover of the painting "Female Nude to the Right" (1914), that is the edition I am looking at.