The Development of Egon Schiele’s Line
Although Egon Schiele had a short life, he managed to create more than 3000 drawings and 300 canvases between 1908 and 1918. His intensive work led to the rapid development of his technique and expression. He is famous with his skills as a draughtsman — as such, the line occupies an exceptional place in his oeuvre.
Egon Schiele (1890–1918) was one of the pioneers of the Austrian expressionism at the beginning of the 20th Century. Depictions of the human body (and soul) is one of the firmest motives in his work. A contemporary of Sigmund Freud, he shared a commitment to the psyche that found its first representatives in Vienna in the early twentieth century. Schiele’s artistic development and personal life were expressionist and intense — he worked with impressive energy and speed, was arrested for the offensive and scandalous aspect of his art and died too early, only twenty-eight years old, a victim of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. His work ranges from lyrical but mysteriously uninhabited cityscapes to dark, gloomy and ambiguous allegories. Although his creative path was quite short, within this limited time, Schiele delved into the creation of an extremely distinctive style, which was built on one main foundation and mean of expression — the line.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the modernism was born in Europe. The development of modern industrial societies, the rapid growth of major European cities and the severe threat looming since the First World War created all the necessary prerequisites for a lasting change in the thinking of the intellectual society. Modernism in art is determined by the activities and creations of those who feel that the traditional forms of architecture, art and social order are already outdated for their needs. The world, which was on the verge of a drastic change, needed a new approach and new methods of solving problems. The highlight of modernism in Austria-Hungary, as well as in the German-speaking countries, was the rethinking of the human values — on many levels. In architecture and design, that was realised in the creation of new buildings and interiors that deny neo-classicism, relying on new decorative forms and solutions. What was a result of these creative searches, was the birth of the Sezession, a decorative style that largely determined the work of modernists in Vienna at that time.
Evolution of Egon Schiele’s Line
Most of Schiele’s work consists of drawings and watercolours. He is accepted as one of the best draughtsmen of all time, with unique and remarkable touch when it comes to building a line and contour of any figures. The line was a dominant element in the structure of all his works, no matter if paintings, drawings or watercolours. Whereas drawings were used mainly for the preparation phase of the paintings, Schiele’s works on paper were actually stand-alone and complete works. It is curious to know that he even managed to make a living out of selling his works on paper.
Beginnings 1908–1909
When Schiele was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he was influenced by the work of Gustav Klimt. He was drawing extremely fast from an early age. As a student, he often did drawing exercises to create a finished work in only 45 minutes as part of his training at the academy. Although during this period Schiele did many exercises for painting in an academic style, following the rules of volume and perspective, the young artist was much more interested in the modern artistic trends and experimented with contour more than with creating volume following the academic rules. From this earliest period on, Schiele was solely building compositions based on the linear approach, and the speed drawing exercises indeed must have helped him to establish his successful practice of drawing with a sure line, quickly and cleanly.
Among the most palpable influences on Schiele from his period at the Vienna Academy was the illustrative style popularized at the time by the German art magazine “Youth” (German: Jugend), created by the artist Georg Hirt (1841–1916). Named after the title “Jugendstil” (German: jugendstil, meaning “youth style”) is defined by researchers as the German counterpart of Art Nouveau. The philosophy behind the movement resonates with the situation in Vienna at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century — a denial of neoclassicism and historicism in architecture and design, which for modernist artists were only a false facade. Art Nouveau style reduced all pictorial elements to flat, monochromatic planes and evened out objects and background in space. The style was widespread in Germany and Austria-Hungary and influenced every aspect of the graphic design and advertising, becoming a leading aesthetic in the production of posters and advertising materials.
When acquainted with the work of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918), Schiele recognised a style that largely determined his ideas of modern art at the time. Klimt evolved the decorative style on a completely different level by adding spiritual greatness and remarkable scale to the illustrative style, and it was his work that had the greatest influence on Egon’s early years. He adopted the aesthetics of Klimt, took some of his subjects and transformed them into something new, removing the façade, their golden beauty, tenderness and dreamy eroticism. As a result, his early line was decorative, soft and “ornamental”, as the art historian Dieter Buchhart defines it in his article “Egon Schiele And The Existential Line”.
In search of his own voice 1910–1911
During that time there is a significant change in his style, which is generally a result of his desire to find his own style and to distinguish himself from Klimt.
Egon Schiele wrote in a letter to Dr. Josef Zermak on November 5th, 1910:
“I went by way of Klimt until March. Today I believe I am someone entirely different.”
This is one of the most eloquent proofs of his purposeful work in the direction of distinguishing himself from the style of his mentor and searching for his own and characteristic style. According to the art collector and founder of the museum of the same name in Vienna, Rudolf Leopold, Schiele was the bearer of the “transformation from Viennese Art Nouveau to Expressionism” and he recognised this as one of the artist’s most significant contributions to art history.
According to Buchhart, in this crucial period, the artist’s line was “searching”, floating between attempts to depict realistic forms. Still characteristic of the style of this period was the use of both volume and two-dimensional decoration in the construction of human figures. The elongated figures began to dominate Schiele’s human images of the period, and his line became denser and elongated with them. For Alessandra Comini, his line became much sharper, with more angles and bends, rejecting Klimt’s rounded and melodic contour. Jane Kalir points out that authors often overlook the fact that when Schiele painted this variety of works in 1910, she was only 19 years old. At this age of maturation, many of the topics he worked on were related to the characteristic psychological breakthrough — sexual maturation and impulses, the experience of many emotions from earlier years and even some traumas from childhood and adolescence.
In his search of more expressive means, another stylistic emerged which we find in the series of the so-called “red” naked bodies, as they are called by Jean Claire (b. 1940) and Jane Kallir. They are significantly different from anything we have seen from Schiele so far. Their postures are more open and are stretched in awkward positions, their arms become rougher and bonier. The line is entirely constructive in these works, the forms are outlined from end to end.
Imprisonment and success 1912–1913
During this moment of his life, Schiele experienced some turning points. At that time he was with Wally in Neulengbach, who was his partner and main model until 1915. In the first half of 1912, Schiele isolated himself from the active life of Vienna, in the countryside, looking for peace and inspiration, with enough material for work, painting a series of landscapes, portraits of Wally, self-portraits and naked bodies. As a result of his bohemian lifestyle and the use of young girls as models, this creative boom was interrupted in April when he was arrested on charges of exposing “pornographic” material to minors. He spent a total of 24 days in custody, first in Neulengbach and then in St. Pölten. Whilst in prison, Schiele kept a diary and painted at least thirteen watercolours, which he named, signed and dated, except for one. During this extremely difficult period, drawing was of crucial psychological help to him.
After the scandal and imprisonment, Schiele returned to Vienna and shortly after became again confident in his work, much more careful in exposing and selling nudes. In 2013 he was elected to the Association of Austrian Artists, whose president was Klimt, and his work was shown in Vienna at the International Black and White Exhibition, his international popularity and recognition increased with his participation in exhibitions in Munich, Hamburg, Stuttgart and more. Schiele’s critics in Vienna did not dispute his talent and mastery as an unsurpassed draughtsman but pointed the grotesque depiction of his models as excessive. The general opinion at the time about him was that he was extremely good with the pencil, but his mind was “sick” and art should not upset in such way.
Schiele’s paintings, usually in earthy colours, were always built on the base of the line. Whether he painted people, landscapes or buildings, the object continued to have a linear structure. Buchhart defines Schiele’s line as “balanced” and “combined”, thickened where the artist places emphasis, more colour and as a result, the bodies of the models stand more massively and steadily. Softer and thinner is the line that depicts their faces and hands, which are the main and key elements in his portraits.
In Schiele’s paintings, the colours were also applied with the help of the line. The contour, as here is Heinrich’s neck, was sometimes outlined directly with colour. Otto Benes’s memoirs mention that Schiele always added colour to the portraits at a later stage, not in front of the models he painted, allowing himself to complete the work after a personal reflection.
In 1913, Schiele began to use a line in a new way — as a solid line surrounding his signature and inside he wrote his name in capital letters. He was placing it on almost all of his works, be they drawings or paintings until the rest of his life. In most cases, along with his name in the fenced area, he puts the year, thus dating almost all of his work from that moment on. Comini sees this as self-isolation from the existential emptiness of the background, which he explored so deeply in his early years. She sees this enclosure as a contrast to Klimt’s open signature, a counterpoint to bold Viennese expressionism versus Art Nouveau’s decorative style.
Graphic works in 1914
Schiele used the pencil and ink masterfully but was not attracted to graphic techniques so far, although, in theory, this seems like an ideal prerequisite for success in graphics. However, in 1914, he experimented with some graphic work, encouraged by his patron Arthur Roessler, in order to try a new medium which can give Schiele access to the German market. There are only 17 prints presented in his Catalogue Raisonne. Could be as a result of his experiments with graphics, but during this time some new elements appeared in his drawings and paintings. The most distinct is the different stylisation of the faces, creating the feeling of the so-called “Doll faces” which depicts the eyes in a very simple and schematic way, as well as the eyebrows and nose. We notice this influence in the way he sometimes draws the faces of his models in the future — round, simple and quite stylised.
Marriage and war 1915–1917
During the First World War, Schiele’s life took on a different direction. 1915 was a year filled with significant life changes that had a great impact on him. After several delays, his mobilisation by the army was inevitable and he was sent to military training in Prague. Shortly before he left, he married Edith Harms, whom he met in 1914. He broke up with his longtime partner Wally because of his decision to marry a woman of his social status. As a married man, he might also have had some advantages during his military service.
The combination of the impending war and the parting with his probably great love reflected on his work and creative path, which we can see in some portraits from 1915. During his mobilisation in the army, he spent some time in Prague, Vienna and Lower Austria. During this period he painted significantly fewer works than in previous extremely productive years. According to Bucchart, the two-dimensionality of his paintings, the use of negative space and his experiments with watercolour and gouache reached a new culmination with the increased attention to body volume. This trend began in 1913, with his experiments in large canvases, where he divided his objects into blocks and created the effect of three-dimensional shape with the help of line and colour patterns and shades. In fact, during this period, the images of his models were already beginning to gain more volume in his drawings as well.
During this time, the line became softer and more fragmented. Bucchart even calls it “amputated”, addressing the way it cuts parts of the bodies of the models. At the same time, increasing body modelling and the demand for volume and three-dimensionality dominated by the end of 1917. In his “Self-portrait with a uniform”, Schiele contrasts the way he depicts the face with the implied collar of his uniform, and the curved line below, to the traditional signature. At first glance, the arc at the bottom of the drawing does not matter, but according to Buchhart, it divides the space and is a reflection of the serious face of the portrait. For him, it can be both useless, but also an interesting game and a hint of a hidden message, a mirror of Schiele’s artistic self as an artist, a master of drawing and line.
Last works in 1918
The tendency of using more and more three-dimensionality continued in his last works. In balance with the refinement of his colouring style, the line was also rounder and smoother. The elongated, bony fingers he depicted so far gave way to more realistic, rounded and fleshy shapes. His critics in 1918 still described his work as cynical and obscene, but in fact, compared to his earlier works, it was far more melancholic and less aggressive. Drawings of women and naked bodies were undisguised as always, but the sexual urge was gone. Researchers Buchhart, Whitford and Kalir find the reason for this in the married life of Schiele, who worked less with other models and led a far less bohemian life. His wife, Edith, posed even half-naked reluctantly, as a result of which the images of women were more impersonal than his earlier works. Schiele’s line has become softer, which caresses the contours of the object, unlike its attack in previous years, and the emphasis shifts from bone to flesh.
One of his last works was The Family (1918), which depicts a man, a woman and a child. The models are Schiele himself, his wife Edith and his nephew. The work radiates melancholy, the eyes of the three are directed in different directions and look vulnerable and defenceless. Schiele’s soft and rounded line visibly outlines all three, contrasting with their light bodies. The contour of the background elements is weaker — the farther the object is, the more the black contour is lost. In this work, we see a bouquet of many of Schiele’s characteristic techniques and style that we have seen evolving over the years: such as round eyes and rounded eyebrows, a legacy of “doll faces”, the creation of three-dimensional bodies, and the “amputated” line, which sometimes cuts parts of the bodies of the models. As one of his last paintings, it can be looked at as the work that completes and concludes his life and oeuvre.
Legacy
The way in which Egon Schiele managed to go beyond the shadow of his great mentor Klimt at such a young age and to create his own style that could hardly be mistaken, is unique. Despite his very short life, Schiele went through several distinctive creative periods, which were marked by both life events and his artistic progress, experiments with different techniques and the dynamics of his inner sensitivity. Characteristic of his work is the mastery of the pencil and the use of the line as the main means of expression and building element of the compositions, whether he created a drawing or oil painting. The most dramatic changes in his style are more visible in his drawings — with pencil, charcoal or ink, with or without the addition of watercolour and gouache.
The early decorative and ornamental line of the Viennese Secession and Art Nouveau paved the way for a sharper and angular contour in 1910–1911 as a result of Schiele’s search for his own touch, differentiation from his mentor Klimt and his experiments to achieve greater expressiveness in his self-portraits, portraits and naked bodies. His experiments with various approaches led to a combined line, which treated the forms with different densities, depending on their place and significance in his works. In tandem with his new “cubist” experiments after 1912, fabrics, clothing, blankets, and drapery took on ambiguous forms that sought to connect the figures with the blank background. The period of the war gave rise to a new treatment of the line, adding the “amputated” and fragmentary line, which sharply separates the body parts of the models or only hints at their existence, elaborating the faces more thoroughly and in detail. The stylisation gradually turned into a search for more volume and density, in shaping the bodies, arms, faces in more realistic and less stretched and unnaturally elongated shapes. Schiele’s latest drawings have more strokes and a variety of lines that intersect to create more density. By 1918, the line was already softer, filled with more tenderness and care, as he himself was in his role as husband and future father.
This piece is compiled by Alexandra Nikolova (Ål Nik), an art history graduate and a visual practitioner based in Europe.
Sources:
Dieter Buchhart, Jean Clair, Alessandra Comini, Jane Kallir. Egon Schiele. Exhibition Catalogue by Foundation Louis Vuitton and Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2018
Frank Whitford. Egon Schiele. Thames & Hudson. New York, 1981
Alessandra Comini. Egon Schiele’s Portraits. University of California Press, Berkeley / London / Los Angeles, 1974
Steiner R. Egon Schiele 1890–1918. The midnight soul of the artist Benedikt Taschen. 1993. Cologne
МоМА Museum. The Graphic Work of Egon Schiele (Das Graphische Werk von Egon Schiele). Albert Berger, Vienna (lithographs). 140.1982.1–8 March 27–July 11, 2011.
