Double Schiele in Vienna: two exhibitions for the Expressionist artist
The Leopold Museum focuses on the production of recent years while the Horten Collection delves into the early stages of his work
4' min read
4' min read
It is a vast exhibition that the Leopold Museum offers on Egon Schiele's last years of activity, and it is well worth a visit because although it presents works that are well known even to the general public, it broadens the widespread perception of an artist confined within Expressionism, all aimed at subjects torn apart by inner desires and the malaise of living, depicted with broken, nervous, angular lines.
Curated by Kerstin Jesse and Jane Kallir, the 130-part exhibition is well-calibrated and informative, and allows us to dive into the final phase of the production of one of the most important artists of the early 20th century who, as the Leopold Museum's initiative shows, in the last part of his short life (he died in 1918, not yet 28) had taken new artistic paths, not only worthy of note, but also a sign of a turning point: 'What was before 1914 belongs to another world. Each of us must bear our own fate, in life and in death: we have hardened ourselves, and lost our fear,' Schiele wrote to his sister Gertrude on 23 November 1914.
The trauma of war
.It is precisely the experience of the horrors of war, which saw him enlisted for some time, that seems to have prompted him to rethink, along with the conscious decision in 1915 to marry not the beloved model Wally Neuziel, with whom he had been having an affair since 1911, but Edith Harms, with whom at the age of twenty-five he began a more bourgeoisly regulated existence. His gaze stopped focusing on himself and became more open to the world around him. In his new family situation, Egon seems to move away from the inner tangles that had characterised his earlier production and his style changes.
In his painting, the last years saw his forms soften and even become florid; the lines became more fluid, the colours became brighter, the depictions often of both heterosexual and homosexual couples became more realistic, while in contrast his drawings veered towards monochrome. In the war year of 1916, stationed in Mühling, some 100 km from Vienna, he was allowed to paint in a warehouse. This resulted in some 40 portraits of soldiers and officers of the Austro-Hungarian army and prisoners, particularly Russians.
By 1917, he was back in the capital, where he could dispose of models with pronounced fleshiness and explicit poses.
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