Book Description

Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele produced a prolific body of work before his early death at the age of twenty-eight in 1918. The oeuvre is comprised of a few hundred oil paintings and thousands of drawings and watercolors.

Schiele's oils have often been reproduced and are well recognized. However, limited access to the fragile works on paper and dispersion among several collections have made for an unbalanced representation of his work as a draftsman.

This book assembles drawings and watercolors from public and private collections and reproduces work from every year of the artist's career, beginning with the juvenilia and early academic studies. The focus means that work that is rarely reproduced is represented extensively, providing a unique opportunity to study the rapid artistic development of Schiele over the course of his brief twelve-year career.

The book is organized chronologically and divided into year-by-year sections. Each section includes a text that discusses the major events in Schiele's life and the interrelation between the artist's drawing and developments in his oil painting. Features a previously unpublished Schiele watercolor and several works that have never been reproduced in color. Over 350 color illustrations. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

another artist who died too young
Schiele is a wonderful artist, and it's a pity that he died so young in his twenties. He got thrown in prison for drawing pictures of girls who were "too young" and I have no interest in his self-portraits where he's holding his tallywhacker. But his drawings of women are very interesting, sometimes enticing.

David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"

How did they do it?
Flipping through the Kallir/Vartanian book on Schiele's drawings and watercolors is a guaranteed way to make several hours of your life disappear without you even noticing it. The reproductions, presented in chronological order from 1907 through 1918, are a joy to ponder and get lost in. Schiele scholars and fans have been given a lavish gift. The biggest mystery is how the publisher, Thames & Hudson of London, could produce this marvel-like book for a such a miniscule cover price--it has the look and feel of a hundred-dollar book.

This is publishing at its absolute finest.

Absolutely Essential for Schiele fans
The price is amazing, considering the amount of images and written material. More than just the usual "greatest hits" compendium, this one book covers Schiele's output with chapters devoted to specific years of his life. The images take up full pages - rather than being small, irritating reproductions - so you can actually SEE the drawings and paintings. These are the best reproductions of his work - yes, I've seen some of the originals - in the largest number (save for Kallir's catalogue raisonne) and with an enormous amount of biographical information. This book thrilled me. Go. Buy. Now!

great value
I've bought several books on Schiele's work over the years but this is, by
far, the best book I've seen so far on the artist's drawings and
watercolors. Plus, it's a great value! It's double the page count of any
other book and has more than double the reproductions of any other book. But
it is the same price (or cheaper) than a lot of other Schiele books out
there. The reproductions are fantastic and the text is really great. A great
buy for all art lovers. ... Read more

Book Description

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was one of the most influential and popular painters to emerge from the cultural ferment that characterized Vienna at the turn of the century. Yet despite the appreciation of his art, the "real" Egon Schiele has remained elusive. This biography, first published together with Abrams' catalogue raisonné of Schiele's work, offers fascinating insights into the artist's brief and sometimes troubled life.

Basing her text chiefly on firsthand sources, many of them previously unpublished, Schiele expert Jane Kallir provides a vibrant account of the artist's childhood and early adulthood, his turbulent encounters with Vienna's patron class, his sexual escapades and imprisonment on a morals charge, his ultimately disappointing marriage, and his premature death at the age of 28. Interwoven with the story of the artist's life is a balanced presentation of his art-the mature and relatively placid pieces together with the turbulent Expressionist work-lavishly illustrated with 94 full-color illustrations and 107 duotone plates. Printed on extra-fine paper with extraordinary reproductions, this beautiful volume stands as the definitive biography of Schiele the man and the artist. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Beautiful
Great buy--Just trust me. If you like his work--you will have much to indulge in. Ah Schiele--the original tortured artist--"In the name of art I will endure to the end!" ... Read more

Amazon.com

This monumental, gorgeous, two-part book, a biography and a catalogue raisonné, is the definitive tome on Egon Schiele (1890-1917), who died at the impossibly tragic age of 27. That a 700-page volume is devoted to his oeuvre says something about his youthful accomplishments, which are rivaled perhaps only by those of Georges Seurat. Author Jane Kallir is the daughter of Otto Kallir, a Viennese art historian and dealer who emigrated to New York in 1931 and opened the Galerie St. Etienne, which showcased the controversial, influential works of such artists as Oskar Kokoschka and Gustav Klimt along with Schiele. Kallir possesses the rare ability to analyze even the most delicate matters with forthrightness, disinterest, and perspicacity. Her lack of cant distinguishes her from the many passionate Schiele mythmakers, and yet there is nothing dull or cold about her writing. With characteristic understatement, she laments "the regrettable tendency of later authors to discredit their predecessors," while acknowledging that "meaningful contributions to Schiele scholarship have been made at every turn." In the long biography, Kallir sifts through a century of potboiling prose to capture the factual past in all its mystery and sadness. She speaks of Schiele's subjects--"the quintessential adolescent experiences of sexual awakening and spiritual exploration"--and remarks, "Neither before nor after Schiele does one often encounter an artist who addresses such issues so directly." Unlike her more reserved predecessors, Kallir openly discusses every nuance of Schiele's personal, sexual, pictorial, political, and social development with subtlety and candor. And in the catalogue raisonné, she offers an essential work of scholarship. Filled with color plates, including the sexually controversial ones of pubescent children and copulating couples, this is the Schiele book that will last. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Pretty good.
Many color pictures. However the final quarter of the book is black and white. Still, this is the best book on the subject.

schiele in depth
i admire art books that are intelligently written, present a representative and rich survey of the artist's works, and are beautifully printed. kallir's book on schiele has all this and more.

after wading through the fatuous, abstract and self absorbed writing that passes for art criticism nowadays it is deeply refreshing to encounter an author like jane kallir, who knows her stuff down to the most intricate footnoted fact but presents the main story with verve, clarity, insight and sympathy. as a portrait of the artist and as a history of art trends in prewar vienna, kallir's telling is searching and well told.

the reproductions of several dozens of schiele's major works -- paintings and drawings -- are presented full page and full color, beautifully printed: it's possible to see the texture variations of schiele's line and the nuances of his color. browsing the work is a joy in itself. however, the real adventure is the catalog raisonne, which presents smaller format black and white images of every known work by schiele's hand (and even a few forgeries). though reduced in size -- six or so works are shown on each page -- the catalog images of the drawings are large enough to be easily legible, and the breakthroughs, variations, detours and consolidations in schiele's style are a fascinating visual story in themselves.

the price is high, but the book is big and heavy, and made to very high standards, so the price is fair. i'm very picky about books, and this book impressed me a lot.

Wonderful!
I used to go to the library for years just to look through this book (it was out of print for a while). It is a wonderful book chronicling all the works of Egon Schiele, and you get a chance to see his growth as an artist. I wish all the drawings in the catalog were printed a lot bigger than the 2"x2", but that would make the book too expensive for anyone but outright scholars because Egon Schiele was such a prolific artist. Still, the details are not completely lost and Jane Kallir is an authority on Egon Schiele's work. The Gallerie St. Ettiene is a wonderful gallery and I got the chance to see many of the drawings in this book there. To look again that the drawings in the book after seeing the real ones, one isn't really disappointed. It is wonderful to have all the works by an artist cataloged this way.

Egon Schiele The Complete Works
As an avid fan of the works of Egon Schilee I found the complete works to be the best thing I've picked up. Like stepping out of a dream the work of Schiele captures any reader. Thisd is a must for the serious persuer or any lover of art. It is simply delicious

Would be nice to get the book ( Poor Service)
Will review the book if I ever get one. Ordered the book a month ago and it hasn't been shipped. I can; however, comment on the service at Amozon. One Star. ... Read more

Reviews (7)

Satisfactory for a Finicky Buyer
Not a "complete collection" of his work, although it does claim to reproduce all of his 'major' oils. It would seem that, given he died before the age of 30, his entire known work or paintings could have been reproduced in one book. Nevertheless, this book does represent a more complete collection that I have seen in any other Schiele books to date. I have been hanging out to get a good book of his work, and finally purchased when I saw this one in a bookshop. In other publications, the colour balance of some works has been a little different (for example I have seen more vibrant/colourful versions of the family squatting).

Simply gorgeous...
...and very frame-worthy prints! Also, a very good range and variety of his works.

Excellent overview of one of Modern's cutting edge artists
Jammed with photos of Schiele, the different subjects and styles from his short career, and background information. This book also serves as a biography in many ways. Schiele's style is full of life's decay and resurrection. His work is only seen as being decadent because we have alienated ourselves so completely from nature and human nature. The natural decay of life is only ugly when one thinks one is above it all or removed from the process. His young nude girls have a silken decadence that glimpses into our natural beauty and being. Instead of turning from the mirror when one sees something less than what one wants to see, Schiele turns the spotlight on until the image is engraved into our psyche. The power of his colors and strokes and images are second to none. He's controversial. But so is Darwin. He tells us things we don't want to hear or see.

Great introduction
If you're like me, a neophite in the world of great austrian art, you'll enjoy this book. It has many reproductions of Schiele's work, all in color, and texts that give you a hint on his purposes and his time.

gorgeous
The only reason that I gave it 4 stars is because im rating the book.. if I were rating the artist it would be a perfect 5 stars! I think Schiele was an artistical genious! It is really very sad that he died so young when it was seemed that he was about to reach the worldwide status he deserved so much.. i feel that art has missed out on a lot of things from his death.. If you're not familiar with Schiele buy this book.. you'll love it! even if you're not into reading! just look at the pictures! ... Read more

Book Description

This visually stunning collection of landscape paintings and drawings by Egon Schiele brings to light a little-known aspect of this famous painter's oeuvre, proving that his mastery extends beyond his radical renditions of the human figure and revealing themes that appeared throughout his life's work. While Schiele is largely revered for his provocative paintings of women, these works were just one aspect of his artistic expression. Schiele's landscapes represent an important facet of his career and are a valuable contribution to the school of European nature painting. ... Read more

Book Description

The Austrian artist Egon Schiele (1890--1918) is renowned for his intensely confrontational portraits, self-portraits, erotic images, and allegories. What is less well known today is that Schiele was also a talented and prolific landscape painter.These fascinating landscapes, however, are now gaining the attention of scholars and the art world.Indeed, Landscape at Krumau (1916) by Schiele recently sold at auction in London for about $20 million. In this beautifully illustrated and engaging book, Kimberly A. Smith provides the first full examination of Schiele's landscapes and townscapes, offering a new approach to and insights into the artist's work and motivations. Diverging from the conventional interpretation that Schiele's paintings are revelations of the artist's psychology and emotional experience, Smith focuses instead on how his landscapes relate to the political, social, and historical conditions in early-twentieth-century Austria. As Smith argues, Schiele's extraordinary landscape paintings are marked by a dialectic of resignation and renewal and convey the character of Viennese modernism itself. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

On the beginnings of the id in art
As we continue to toil through terrors remembered from the last century, up pops this little tome that quite successfully takes us back to the early years of the last century when psychology and the study of the dark side of our minds exerted its now immutable influence on all of history. In this scholarly but immensely entertaining dissection of the seeds within Egon Schiele's mind that produced a prodigious, fascinating body of figurative painting in a short life time, author Schroder investigates sexuality, mores, mental hospitals and those who captured the inmates on film, photography, and the crumbling of empires. Lavishly illustrated with not only many relatively unknown Schiele works but also with works by Gertsl, Klimt, Degas, Courbet and scientific photographs of the twisted minds and bodies caged in sanitariums, this book reads well and allows us to absorb just how significant Schiele was in opening 20th century art to new levels of exploration. This is a fine addition to libraries of artists, students, collectors, physicians, psychologists...and anyone who enjoys visiting the fin de sicle - asurring us that what seems crude today was seen, perhaps more naievly, a whole century ago!

A painfully transparent Schiele
If in-your-face nudity is your cup of tea, then Egon Schiele is the one for you. He is the avatar of not only physical transparency; but also of emotional transparency. The uncoventional nude poses makes you a co-conspirator on a voyeuristic voyage, a voyage which you may embarrasingly enjoy or find distastefully provocative. The Prestel Verlag publication is translated from German. While it is priced for the budget conscious, its text is not so easily accessible. The text relies heavily on psycho-analytic jargon and analysis. For the uninitiated, it can prove to be quite a quagmire to wade through. So be forewarned. But if you are interested in Schiele's psyche then you will gobble this up.

Schiele's works represented in this book is adequately comprehensive and a fitting catalogue of his repertoire. If you are a fan of Kent William's works (mostly comics related)then you would see some influences borrowed from Schiele, esp in his limited colour palette. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

cheap.
dover art library books are a great way to get copies of master drawings...cheap. all prints are in b/w and print quailty isn't the best...but for the price they are a great unprecious alternative to the glove wearing 60$ art book. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Out of Expressionism
Because he cared about how his art looked and because he accepted traditional ideas of what looked good on canvas, EGON SCHIELE remained outside of Expressionism. Expressionist influences nevertheless showed up in his bold graphics, distorted lines, and unnatural colors: "The artist's wife" wore a plain skirt covered with heavy impastoes, against a similarly treated background, by the emotionally charged, energetically treated brushwork style of Oskar Kokoschka; "View of Krumau" brought Georges Braque- and Pablo Picasso-type Cubism into the exaggeratedly high, unusual viewpoints to make a three-dimensional motif work on a two-dimensional Gustav Klimt-style decorative picture plane. They also had their role in his opinion of art as having to do with feelings, which he drew as abnormal or exaggerated in his self-portraits: "Self-portrait with black clay vase" gave him a double-jointed pair of hands in the manner of medievally represented saints, Paul Gauguin-style self-painted ceramic head, and a vulnerably, wide-eyed look. Expressionism played a part, too, in his pessimistic views: "The family" painted an unhappy trio looking in different directions against a brightly lit background as menacing as a spotlight; drooping "Sunflower" leaves hung dejectedly along a woody stalk; and with her Gustav Klimt-styled fine society lady's huge hat, "The scornful woman" showed an Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec-styled fish wife nude to the waist and sneering at a hurtful world. Author Frank Whitford has come up with a good set of illustrations and text. The author's book, along with his KLIMT, and Christopher Short's SHIELE give a good idea of the artist's place among Bernard Denvir's TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, Jose Maria Faerna's KOKOSCHKA, Hans Ludwig C Jaffe's PABLO PICASSO, Susanna Partsch's GUSTAV KLIMT, Belinda Thomson's GAUGUIN, and Karen Wilkin's GEORGES BRAQUE. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Getting a lot in 80 pages.
This book is an ideal size for my art collection. Big books are heavy, and knowing that I can find every picture that is still known of a particular artist takes some of the excitement out of seeing what is on the next page. Some of the early pages, and even worse, plates 62 and 63, have pictures in black and white, which isn't the way I expect to see them, because I know they have been robbed of the original color. The list of plates numbers 73, which is a fair number for 80 pages. The Contents lists 8 topics, all of which are interesting enough, and "The Artist and Society" was particularly a problem for Egon Schiele. I think the most is packed into those seven pages, which includes pictures of Lovers 1911, Self-Portrait 1912, Agony 1912, Nude Black-Haired Girl Standing 1910, Prisoner! 24 April 1912, Cardinal and Nun 1912, Hindering the Artist is a Crime, It Is Murdering Life in the Bud! 23 April 1912, For my Art and for My Loved Ones I will Gladly Endure to the End! 25 April 1912, and Fighter 1913. I relate most strongly to the (in prison)autobiographical portraits, and I'm disappointed that Self-Portrait with Hand to Cheek 1918 is not in color on page 27, but the explanation on the following page is good, even if it mentions his critics: "Alessandra Comini has put forward the convincing explanation that, whatever else it may mean, the gesture is a punning reference to the artist's name: in German the verb schielen means to squint, and apparently a number of hostile critics used this correspondence to make sarcastic jokes about Schiele's eyesight." (p. 28) Plate 72 is a late portrait which I have seen in an art museum, exhibited with other paintings. The paint covers the canvas and it is signed, Egon Schiele 1918, the year of Schiele's death, but the final comment of this book is "This, the most painterly of all his late works, is a final, monumental statement of Schiele's vision of the artist. It was left unfinished at his death." It is not clear from the picture what more he might have done, and he previously had left things out. If he was going to finish anything, I think he should have given the Black-Haired Girl Standing in 1910 a right elbow. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Leaves out some of his best nudes
Egon Schiele remains one of my favorite artists. "Nudes" does have some excellent pieces included but should have been far more inclusive, since Schiele has such an extensive portfolio to draw from. Too many sketches that are only interesting because of the artist who drew them. This book is worth having if you're a true Schiele fan. However, I would strongly recommend "Schiele" by Wolfgang Georg Fisher if you want a more rounded perspective and those other nudes that should have been included here.

The human body
I felt that this book displayed an amazing collection of Scheile's life paintings. I was extremely moved by the expressive style in which he painted. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Scholarly and colorful.
This book by Reinhard Steiner gives a very intellectual treatment to the art of Egon Schiele.From pages 9 to 11, Nietzsche is quoted as a guide to the self, and for the first quote, Steiner must be translating from the German himself, for the footnote is not to an English version of Nietzsche's work.Could this be familiar?

It is a theatre of the self which is in dangerous proximity to Friedrich Nietzsche's aphoristic description (in 1888) of the modern artist:"The modern artist, physiologically close kin to the hysteric, bears the signs of hysteria in his very character too . . . The absurd excitability of his constitution, which makes a crisis of every experience and drags drama into the merest chances of life, renders him utterly unpredictable:he is no longer one person, but at most a gathering of persons, and now this one, now that will be conspicuous amongst them, with unabashed confidence. . . ."(pp. 9-10).

Almost everything in the book is reproduced in color, but the paintings might not please everyone.Consider them stark.

Good intro to a disturbing artist
As a quick study of/introduction to Egon Schiele, this book is great.Timeline, bio, an examination of influences and early works are included, but the highlights are Schiele's mature paintings.His self-portraits makehim look like a concentration camp internee.Beautiful, scary stuff. ... Read more

Book Description

Even pioneering and similarly reviled contemporaries of Egon Schiele (1890 - 1918) had their reservations about the pornographic side of Schiele's visual world.But, for Schiele, it was an exploration into the image of "woman" from various angles and phases.He painted everything form the budding, awkward body of the pubescent girl to the seductive vamp.His unsparing passion was not only brought to bear on female nudes; his countless drawings, gouaches, and watercolors, were equally unremitting.In 1911, he wrote, "the erotic of art is sacred too". ... Read more

Book Description

Egon Schiele, the Austrian painter, draftsman, and printmaker, was one of the major figures of Austrian Expressionism. This beautiful book discusses and reproduces 150 of Schiele`s paintings, watercolors, gouaches, and drawings from the Leopold collection, which can now be seen in the new Schiele Museum in Austria. ... Read more

Book Description

The meaning of portraiture in the egocentric and erotic culture ofVienna at the end of the Hapsburg Empire frames Alessandra Comini's definitive,lavishly illustrated study of the art of Egon Schiele (1890-1918), firstpublished in 1975 and now available in paperback with a new preface and updatedbibliography. Comini analyzes Schiele's work in the context of VienneseExpressionism, rising existential consciousness, and the unique ambiance ofVienna. The human figure forms the most compelling motif in Schiele's oeuvre,which is comprised of hundreds of oils and thousands of drawings. Numerous self- portraits record emotional states, reflect major stylistic changes, and providea brilliant focus for this examination of his art and his life. ... Read more