Customer Reviews

Egon Schiele, 1890-1918: Desire and Decay (Midsize) (Spanish Edition)

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This is another welcome addition to Taschen's 25th Anniversary Series of large, hardcover collections. You get excellent reproductions of many of Egon Schiele's finest work along with Wolfgang Georg Fischer's expert commentary.

Besides the works themselves, I found the most valuable part of the book to be the historical and biographical information. Fischer gives the necessary perspective with which to view Schiele's sometimes difficult work without being excessively wordy or academic. I love academic writing as much as anyone, but I think the intended audience here is not going to want to wade through pages of theoretical discourse.

In addition to the paintings, there are some photographs of Schiele, his family, and his colleagues. After looking at his numerous self-portraits and (especially) the paintings of his wife, it's fascinating to see photographs of them in a casual context.

Schiele's style may not appeal to everyone, but this book is an excellent place to begin your appreciation, especially at Taschen's extremely low price. When you look at all the $3-12k limited edition books they release, it's nice that they remember that poor college students enjoy great art books too!

Though originally released in 1998 as a fine monograph by Wolfgang Georg Fischer, SCHIELE is in its present form part of the Taschen 25th Anniversary editions. And in keeping with the quality of Taschen artist monographs this edition is presented on very fine paper with excellent reproductions of Schiele's works as well as a number of photographs of the artist, his family, his models, and his confreres.

Fischer weaves the too brief history of this gifted artist (he died in 1918 at age 28 from the Spanish Influenza) with references to the art of the period at the turn of the century, carefully keeping Schiele in focus with the famous people of the era - artists and writers and statesmen - in as fine a manner as any writer of Schiele biographers.

Many of Schiele's very large paintings are diminished to near postage stamp size, likely due to the overt sexuality of the paintings, while Schiele's landscapes and less controversial paintings are given full-page reproductions. But this is a small flaw in a survey book that informs as well as entertains. Well worth the modest price, even for those who have multiple books detailing this important artist's life and times and work. Grady Harp, July 09

This book is filled with very nicely painted human figures.This book pretty much shows how Egon developed his own style. His distorted human figures are so interesting to look at. His color palette is very interesting and his choice of drawing the human figure different from the norm is clever. This book does not disappoint and gives you an inside of Egon's life as an artist and student. Worth buying and you might find it for a better price at Barns & Nobel.

The book arrived in good condition and in the expected time. The only difference is that I ask for it in Spanish and it arrived in English, but for me is the same. Anyway I am enjoing it very much, as I enjoy all the books I buy from Amazon.