Egon Schiele's Women

During his brief yet prolific career, Egon Schiele created hundreds of drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings of the women in his life. His work is generally regarded as expressionistic, emotional, intense, autobiographical, and highly sexual. In this elegant and beautifully illustrated book, Jane Kallir examines Schiele’s depictions of women to argue that there is more to these images than we realize. Drawing from the latest research as well as her own exhaustive familiarity with Schiele’s entire oeuvre, Kallir explores four distinct periods, each characterized by a single figure or series of women: the artist’s mother and sisters; the often anonymous models of the “breakthrough” years, 1910–11; his lover, Wally Neuzil; and his wife, Edith, and her sister, Adele. Weaving together historical context, biographical information, and observations of the works, Kallir demonstrates how these women relate not only to Schiele’s development but to the larger issue of feminine representation. Kallir offers a panoply of significant insights into a central aspect of the artist’s achievement, which has never before been the subject of a focused study. Schiele’s fans will treasure this beautiful and groundbreaking addition to the literature on this important artist.