Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (German: [ˈeːɡɔn ˈʃiːlə] ⓘ; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painter.

The twisted body shapes and the expressive line that characterize Schiele's paintings and drawings mark the artist as an early exponent of Expressionism.

[4] According to family lore Adolf Schiele had contracted the disease during his honeymoon in Trieste, when he had visited a brothel[4] after his new wife scared of the consummation of the marriage fled their bedroom.

[5] Schieles family life was however deeply influenced by his father's illness and as the syphilis progressed it left him in a state of mental confusion and would oftentimes cast him into fits of rage.

Before his death Schiele's father in a fit of insanity had burned the railway stocks he owned wich would have helped out the family`s economy.

Schiele's elder sister Melanie became the sole breadwinner of the family when she was hired as a ticket clerk at the local railway station.

His main teacher at the academy was Christian Griepenkerl, a painter whose strict doctrine and ultra-conservative style frustrated and dissatisfied Schiele so much that he left after three years.

Klimt took a particular interest in the young Schiele, buying his drawings, offering to exchange them for some of his own, arranging models for him and introducing him to potential patrons.

[11] Schiele began to participate in what would be numerous group exhibitions, including those of the Neukunstgruppe in Prague in 1910 and Budapest in 1912; the Sonderbund, Cologne, in 1912; and several Secessionist shows in Munich, beginning in 1911.

In 1911, at the age of twenty-one, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Walburga (Wally) Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna and served as a model for some of his most striking paintings.

Schiele and Wally wanted to escape what they perceived as the claustrophobic Viennese milieu, and went to the small town of Český Krumlov (Krumau) in southern Bohemia.

Progressively, Schiele's work grew more complex and thematic, and he eventually would begin dealing with themes such as death and rebirth.

[12] Together the couple moved to Neulengbach, 35 km (22 mi) west of Vienna, seeking inspirational surroundings and an inexpensive studio in which to work.

Schiele's way of life aroused much animosity among the town's inhabitants, and in April 1912 he was arrested under suspicion of kidnapping and seducing a girl of 13.

When his case was brought before a judge, the charges were dropped, but the artist was found guilty of exhibiting erotic drawings in a place accessible to children.

[16] In 1914, Schiele glimpsed the sisters Edith and Adéle Harms, who lived with their parents across the street from his studio in the Viennese district of Hietzing, 101 Hietzinger Hauptstraße.

This abandonment led him to paint Death and the Maiden, where Wally's portrait is based on a previous pairing, but Schiele's is newly struck.

Because of his weak heart and his excellent handwriting, Schiele was eventually given a job as a clerk in a POW camp near the town of Mühling.

There, he was allowed to draw and paint imprisoned Russian officers; his commander, Karl Moser (who assumed that Schiele was a painter and decorator when he first met him), even gave him a disused store room to use as a studio.

Due to fear of contagion visitors would communicate by Schiele from afar by way of a mirror wich was set up on the treshold of his room and the parlour[4] .

[24] Jane Kallir has described Schiele's work as grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or disturbing, with a focus on sex, death, and discovery.

[33] The novel The Flames (Doubleday, 2022)[34] by the British author Sophie Haydock[35] [36] blends fact and fiction to tell a story of Schiele's four most significant muses.

[37] The Italian translation, Le Fiamme (Salani, 2023),[38] won the Premio Letterario Edoardo Kihlgren award for a debut novel in 2024.

"[39] Mario Vargas Llosa uses the work of Schiele as a conduit to seduce and morally exploit a main character in his 1997 novel The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto.

[40] Wes Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel features a painting by Rich Pellegrino that is modeled after Schiele's style which, as part of a theft, replaces a so-called Flemish/Renaissance masterpiece, but is then destroyed by the angry owner when he discovers the deception.

[44] The opening chapters of Guy Mankowski's 2017 novel An Honest Deceit were cited to be heavily influenced by Schiele's paintings; in particular his portrayals of his sister, Gertrude.

[45] The Leopold Museum, Vienna houses perhaps Schiele's most important and complete collection of work, featuring over 200 exhibits.

[47] Egon Schiele had among his admirers many Jewish art collectors whose collections were looted under the Nazis: in Germany from 1933, in Austria from the Anschluss of 1938, and in France from the German occupation of 1940.

[50][51] She first made a restitution claim in 1948 but her heirs were not able to recover the Schiele until 2002: Austria's Nazi looting organization, the Vugesta, had auctioned Krumau at the Dorotheum in Vienna on 24–27 February 1942, where the Sanct Lucas gallery bought it on behalf of Wolfgang Gurlitt.

[52] The 1917 painting by Egon Schiele, Portrait of the Artist's Wife was owned by Karl Mayländer, a Jewish businessman in Vienna who was murdered in Auschwitz.