Egon Schiele: Women

In autumn 2010 the Royal Academy plastered Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s watercolour Two Women Embracing, all over London’s phone boxes and tube stations, to promote its Treasures from Budapest exhibition. Schiele is well-known, yet puzzlingly his work is absent from the UK’s permanent collections and there has not been an exhibition of his work since 1989.

Therefore art dealer Richard Nagy’s long-awaited exhibition of some 50 of Schiele’s ‘Mature Period’ (1910-18) watercolours and drawings, from private and seldom seen collections is very welcome indeed.

Schiele’s work may not be to everyone’s taste. Drawings of women sprawled out against empty backgrounds, legs akimbo, their pale, emaciated bodies starkly naked but for bright silk stockings and high-heeled shoes, can make for unsettling viewing. Alongside these women hangs Eros, a self-portrait showing the artist as a sickly-looking masturbator holding an enormous erect penis flecked with vivid red paint that stands out against his blue-grey body.

In 1912 an Austrian judge held up one such drawings before a court and set fire to it, on the grounds that it was obscene, and then sent its young creator to prison for violating codes of public decency. Works like this were not popular in early 20th century Vienna and during his short career (he died of influenza aged 28), Schiele sought to address what he saw as the sexual hypocrisy of a city where prostitutes and pornography were rife but sex was not discussed in public.

The assertive sexuality of this work still has the power to shock. ‘Either the picture goes or I do’, declared the girlfriend of the owner of one of the pictures in this show. The Schiele is still displayed on the collector’s wall.

There is an element of voyeurism in seeing all these women stripped bare, especially as they are mainly of women he was close to: his sister, wife and relatives. But these works are not gratuitously shocking. Schiele has a talent for showing an immense amount of life and pathos, with just one simple, economical line and a little shading.

He drew from life, adding colour later, and this contributes to making his work wonderfully expressive, tender and passionate. Pencil drawings of his sister sleeping and his sister-in-law with her curly haired dog (Louis) are beautifully observed and feel intimate. The composition of ‘Blonde Woman with Red Muff’ shows the influence of Schiele’s mentor, Klimt, but Schiele did well to move away from Klimt’s decorative style. The empty backgrounds and unadorned nature of his work is very effective. Schiele’s brutal realism and honesty influenced Lucian Freud and Tracy Emin, and this exhibition complements the Emin retrospective currently on at the Hayward Gallery nicely.

I left wanting to see more of Schiele’s work and wishing that his career had not been cut short by his untimely death. The gallery was busy and comments in the guestbook gushed about how this exhibition was long overdue. Hopefully this one will encourage other galleries to show work by this rebellious artist.

Egon Schiele: Women is on display at the until June 30 at:

Richard Nagy Gallery
22 Old Bond Street (2nd Floor)
Soho
W1S 4PY

Tel. 0207 262 6400