Description

Egon Schiele 1918 Graphite Pencil and Gouache Drawing

Museum Quality Artifacts

Private Collection Estate Sale

Remarkable artwork : ‘Stehende Ehefrau, die sich seitwärts beugt und die Hose herunterzieht’

Graphite pencil and gouache on medium beige paper which was torn out of its sketch book (left hand side)

This artwork is signed and dated 1918

Sheet measures 30 x 23 cm (12″ x 9.2″)

Drawing was bought during the Rockefeller Center Gallery New Year’s Auction in 1988 and comes with documents and expertise from the Gallery

In 1914 Austrian figurative painter Egon Schiele married Edith Harms and in the following years Schiele produced a number of portraits of his wife. This included the above mentioned drawing. The suggestive nature of this portrait was a common trait in Schiele’s work and reflected the artistic manor of his mentor and former Austrian painter Gustav Klimt.

At the same time he created numerous portraits and nudes, including of his wife Edith and her older sister Adele. Without a doubt, however, the drawing of “Stehende Ehefrau, die sich…..” shows how Schiele turned his back on conventions and broke new ground in terms of content and form.

French protagonists of nude painting such as Edgar Degas or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec suggested that the artist was a hidden observer, watching models as they went about their daily business, bathing, undressing or sleeping. Egon Schiele abandoned this approach, removing his models from any spatial environment. Even Gustav Klimt showed his models as beings indulging their sexuality, their closed eyes seeming not to notice the artist.

Drawing is in absolute mint condition

Information on Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele (June 12, 1890 – October 31, 1918) was an Austrian painter.

A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century.

His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced.

The twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterize Schiele’s paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism.

In 1907, Schiele sought out Gustav Klimt.

Klimt, mentoring younger artists, took a particular interest in the gifted young Schiele, buying his drawings, offering to exchange them for some of his own, arranging models for him, and introducing him to potential patrons.

Klimt invited Schiele to exhibit some of his work at the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau, where he encountered the work of Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, and Vincent van Gogh among others.

Once free of the constraints of the Academy’s conventions, Schiele began to explore not only the human form but also human sexuality.

At the time, many found the explicitness of his works disturbing.

In 1911, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Valerie (Wally) Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna and served as a model for some of his most striking paintings.

Very little is known of her, except that she had previously modeled for Gustav Klimt and might have been one of his mistresses.

In 1914, Schiele glimpsed the sisters Edith and Adéle Harms, who lived with their parents across the street from his studio in the Viennese suburb of Hietzing.

Schiele participated in numerous group exhibitions.

Including those of the Neukunstgruppe in Prague in 1910 and Budapest in 1912; the Sonderbund, Cologne, in 1912; and several Secessionist shows in Munich, beginning in 1911.

In 1913, the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich, mounted Schiele’s first solo show. A solo exhibition of his work took place in Paris in 1914.

In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic that claimed more than 20,000,000 lives in Europe, reached Vienna.

Edith, who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease on 28 October.

Schiele died only three days after his wife. He was 28 years old.

During the three days between their deaths, Schiele drew a few sketches of Edith; these were his last works.

In his early years, Schiele was strongly influenced by Klimt and Kokoschka.

Although imitations of their styles, particularly with the former, are noticeably visible in Schiele’s first works, he soon evolved into his own distinctive style.

Some view Schiele’s work as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or disturbing, focusing on sex, death, and discovery.

He focused on portraits of others as well as himself.

In his later years, while he still worked often with nudes, they were done in a more realistic fashion.