Between ruin and renewal: Egon Schiele's landscapes

Abstract

The Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is renowned for his intensely confrontational portraits, self-portraits, erotic images, and allegories. What is less well known today is that Schiele was also a talented and prolific landscape painter. These fascinating landscapes, however, are now gaining the attention of scholars and the art world. Indeed, Landscape at Krumau (1916) by Schiele recently sold at auction in London for about USD20 million. In this beautifully illustrated and engaging book, Kimberly Smith provides the first full examination of Schiele's landscapes and townscapes, offering a new approach to and insights into the artist's work and motivations. Diverging from the conventional interpretation that Schiele's paintings are revelations of the artist's psychology and emotional experience, Smith focuses instead on how his landscapes relate to the political, social, and historical conditions in early twentieth-century Austria. As Smith argues, Schiele's extraordinary landscape paintings are marked by a dialectic of resignation and renewal and convey the character of Viennese modernism itself.