Egon Schiele At the tender age of 20,broke radically with the history of figurative painting, portraying the psychological state of his subjects rather than their physical characteristics. This approach resulted in a deep well of subversive drawings and paintings that unmasked his sitters—including, and perhaps most significantly, himself—as angsty, emaciated, gender ambiguous, and sexually experimental beings.

Since Schiele’s tragic demise in 1918 at the age of 28, a cult following has galvanized around the wunderkind Austrian artist, whose avant-garde and open-minded depiction of the human body and sexuality was unprecedented in the realm of critically acclaimed art. Below, we explore the forces that inspired the power of Schiele’s oeuvre—one that still spellbinds artists and art lovers the world over today.





Who Was Egon Schiele?





In his early years living with his station-master father, mother, and two sisters at a railroad junction in the small Austrian town of Tulln, Schiele displayed a knack for draftsmanship evident in intricate drawings of trains and their trappings. But it was personal tragedy that propelled him, once and for all, into a life devoted to his artistic practice, one accompanied by an ever-ballooning ego. His father, who frequented brothels in his youth (as was usual for well-to-do Austrian men of the era), was first rendered mad, then later died in 1905 from the sexually transmitted disease syphilis. His psychosis and death deeply affected the 19-year-old Schiele, but simultaneously unlocked a ferocious curiosity around sexuality, mortality, and the inner-workings of the human mind in the young artist.