Egon Schiele: Visionary or Voyeur?

His art has been seized and destroyed, burnt over a candle flame by an outraged judge. He was imprisoned for obscenity and chased out of the town of Krumau for drawing naked women in the garden.

Egon Schiele was one of the most startling painters of the early 20th Century.
Initially mentored by Gustav Klimt, Schiele eventually moved away from Klimt’s glittering paintings to develop his own signature style.

He painted humanity, sex, life and death. He painted images of himself as an emaciated man hovering somewhere between genius and madness. More than anything, Schiele was obsessed by the human body in all its vulnerability.

His works were so raw and revealing that they shocked and scandalised Viennese society. Over 100 years later they are still shocking – even today his paintings and drawings are censored.

His career was brief. But during just a decade of fervent activity, he created works that influenced generations of painters and profoundly affected the development of modern art.