Egon Schiele

Examines the character and developments of the art of Egon Schiele, and considers a balanced selection of his paintings and drawings. Schiele's pictures still shock us with their linking of eros and thanatos, naked spiritual longings and a neurotic energy that looks and feels contemporary. Pregnant Woman and Death , Two Girls Embracing Each Other , Levitation , Dead City the titles proclaim the obsessions of this Austrian expressionist who died of flu at age 28. First published in English translation in 1975, this monograph has been out of print for more than a decade. It contains some of the finest examples of Schiele's compulsive art, beautifully reproduced in 65 color plates and 108 black-and-whites. Mitsch is curator of Vienna's Albertina Museum. His ponderous, art-lecture prose catches fire when he discusses Schiele's "fanatic search for truth" and the "powerful, pathetic explosions of feeling" that haunt his canvases. This volume holds its own against more recent and comprehensive studies of an artist who filtered the lessons of symbolism and Klimt through his own tortured sensibility. -- Publishers Weekly.

Egon Schiele: 27 Masterworks brings together a group of the artist's most significant works, including a cross-section of his major paintings and many of his most beautiful watercolors and drawings. A thorough overview of the oils enables the reader to understand the artist's overriding creative ambitions, but it is in his works on paper that Schiele truly stands out. As evidenced by the numerous oversize and superbly printed reproductions in this book, Schiele deserves to be counted among the foremost draftsmen of all time, ranking alongside Albrecht Durer and Hans Holbein. Egon Schiele: 27 Masterworks follows the entire trajectory of the artist's career, beginning with his early Gustav Klimt-influenced paintings and his startling Expressionist breakthrough in 1910 at the tender age of 20, to his more serene late works, completed shortly before his untimely death at the age of 28.