Egon Schiele. Self-portraits and portraits

This book traces Schiele´s development as a portraitist through four principal chronological phases, from 1906 to 1918. Starting with the artist´s rigorous training at the Vienna Academy, it chronicles Schiele´s eventual break with academia and the emergence of his Expressionistic style. As Schiele honed his technical abilities, he gathered a coterie of patrons-many of whom he immortalized on canvas-and developed a tendency toward realism and introspection. Throughout his career Schiele tested the boundaries of traditional portraiture. Confrontational, explicitly erotic, and largely devoid of props or scenery, Schiele´s portraits are seminal works of originality and deep empathy with the human condition. This volume also offers a close examination of Schiele´s self-portraits and his relationship with Gustav Klimt, Schiele´s gestic language in the context of contemporaneous photography and the silent film, as well as brief biographies of Schiele´s subjects and transcriptions of illuminating letters pertaining to his life and work.