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In a brief life cut short by the Spanish flu, Egon Schiele managed to create an oeuvre that was both symptomatic of and groundbreaking for his times, making him one of the most formative and colourful figures of Viennese Modernism. With his sensational, partly-celebrated, partly-demonized appearances on the Viennese art scene, Schiele became the spokesman for a generation of young, ambitious artists in the years to come.
At the centre of his artistic interest was the contemplation of his own existence, as reflected in countless self-portraits as well as landscapes and cityscapes. Schiele stylized himself in his works and letters as a sage and clairvoyant, as a conduit with an intense sense of reality and truth. Using eccentric gestures and facial expressions, he conveyed the urgency of relentlessly interrogating the body, and postulated self-reflection as a quasi-blending of corporeality and sexuality with existential questions.
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