PORTFOLIO
Drawings
Schiele drew almost every day and is recognized as a master draftsman. The primacy of line in his work gives him a reputation that is derived more from drawings and watercolors than the oil paintings he had produced. The drawings are unburdened by the ponderous allegorical goals of Symbolism and prove to have a spontaneity and unresolved passion than the paintings which demonstrate more involved statements about the human condition.
He used color's expressive power in paintings, but line dominated his brushstrokes. Most of his drawings were fully-conceived independent works unrelated to his paintings. His paintings were integral to his artistic vision but they are not what his reputation rests upon.
Bruce Biro © 2009 Tri-C West Web Publishing: HTML Monday & Wednesday class
Paintings
The paintings of Egon Schiele derived from a tradition of allegorical painting that also shaped the career of Gustav Klimt, his mentor but the popularity of allegorical painting had reached its end by the turn of the century even for the famed Klimt. For Schiele it meant his work was un-sellable. Late developments in his work pushed his paintings to be more painterly and his drawings to become almost monochromatic and only in the last year or two did his paintings sell.
