Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection, Vienna [Hardcover]

Magdalena Dabrowski (Author), Rudolf Leopold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1997

Egon Schiele, the Austrian painter, draftsman, and printmaker, was one of the major figures of Austrian Expressionism. This beautiful book discusses and reproduces 150 of Schiele's paintings, watercolors, gouaches, and drawings from the Leopold collection, which can now be seen in the new Schiele Museum in Austria.

While remaining faithful to the initial influences on his work of the Vienna Secession and in particular of the art of Gustav Klimt, Schiele developed a highly personal and expressive style. This style -- which reflects the sexual and psychological tension explored in writing by his contemporary Freud -- can be seen not only in his self-portraits and female nudes but also in his colorful paintings and watercolors of the Czech village of Krumau. Schiele's art defines the expressionist end of the Art Nouveau period in Vienna.

This book will be the catalogue for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opening in October 1997 and closing in January, 1998.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Austrian Expressionist painter Schiele (1890-1918) broke away from the decorative Vienna Secession style, especially that of Gustav Klimt, and developed his own technique using simple lines and bold colors to express intensity of emotions, suffering, and isolation. Schiele's obsession with sexuality and death is seen in the artist's self-portraits and nude female studies characterized by grotesque grimaces, contorted limbs, exposed genitals, and sorrowful, often corpselike expressions. Schiele's final work, a chilling drawing of his wife on her deathbed, exemplifies his superb draftsmanship. This catalog for a recent exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) presents the most extensive collection of Schiele's work, held in the Leopold Museum in Vienna. The collector who founded the Austrian museum, Leopold contributes insightful textual notes for the 152 color plates, while MOMA curator Dabrowski provides the clear introduction. Strongly recommended for general and modern art history collections.?Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

The art collection of Rudolf Leopold, displayed in this volume, well represents the brilliant draftsmanship, idiosyncratic color, and intense, often neurotic power of Schiele's work. Ms. Dabrowski's introduction tells enough about the painter's family background to account for his sexually morbid self-portraits and enough about turn-of-the-century Viennese society to account for his épater le bourgeois female nudes. Schiele was under thirty when he died in the flu epidemic of 1918. One can only wonder where his art would have gone in the 1920s, because in some respects he was already ahead of them. -- The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams

The book ... contains an unusually provocative contribution from the collector who amassed the artworks over many years, Rudolph Leopold. Though some might disagree that toward the end of his life Schiele was "years ahead of Picasso" ... few would argue with Leopold's assertion that the artist managed to elevate his own troubles "to the level of universal truth." -- The New York Times Book Review, Ted Loos

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 364 pages
• Publisher: Dumont Buchverlag (October 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300073224
• ISBN-13: 978-0300073225
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 9.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,359,715 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The largest Schiele collection in the world, December 14, 2009

By 

Claude Reich (Florianopolis, Brazil and Paris, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection, Vienna (Hardcover)

Basically, there are two big Egon Schiele collectors in the world: Ronald Lauder (the heir to the Estee Lauder empire) and Rudolf Leopold. It so happens that both of them have mounted their own museum, Lauder opening the Neue Galerie in NYC, and Leopold opening the Leopold Museum in Vienna, in 2001. This book, written by Rudolf Leopold himself, illustrates and explains most of the works (paintings, watercolors and drawings) that comprise his collection. Each work is accompanied by a short (sometimes too short) analysis and is beautifully illustrated, even though one would have appreciated some magnified details, especially for the oil paintings, in order to get a better idea of the texture of the works. The other shortcoming of this book is that the provenance of the works is never mentioned, which, in this case, is a major information gap.

A good, but not great, book on Egon Schiele.

5.0 out of 5 stars Egon Schiele, November 5, 2011

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Kat - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Egon Schiele: The Leopold Collection, Vienna (Hardcover)

Product worked great as a birthday present for my boyfriend. Was able to find it on Amazon cheaper than anywhere else, and it was still the same product in excellent condition.