Material Pencil on paper
Dimensions 21 × 41 cm
Place of Creation Austria
Status Vetted

About the Work

Egon Schiele's drawing "Female Nude" from 1911 is an exemplary work of Viennese Modernism and illustrates the radical reorientation of nude depiction at the beginning of the 20th century. Using the simplest technical means, Schiele reduces the depiction to the essentials and yet creates an intense psychological tension.


The young woman's body is stretched diagonally across the sheet, from the lower left edge to the upper right corner. The figure is reduced to a minimum of lines - sparse, almost sketch-like, but at the same time highly expressive. The model's gaze is directed straight at the viewer, which stands in stark contrast to the traditionally passive role of the female nude in art history. Her face is carefully worked out, with clearly defined eyes, lips and an implied hairstyle - a psychological anchor point within the otherwise fleeting composition. The posture of the body appears not only sensual, but also vulnerable, almost repellent - an ambivalence that is typical of Schiele's psychologised art and his examination of human existence.


1911 was a key year in Schiele's development: he had just emancipated himself from his mentor Gustav Klimt and turned to a more expressive, raw style of depiction. While Klimt's figures often appear ornamentally exaggerated and erotically transfigured, Schiele shows a ruthless, intimate physicality in "Female Nude". His works from this period are characterised by Expressionism and are distinguished by psychological depth and an intense exploration of sexuality, death and identity.


The coarse, brownish paper underlines the rawness of the depiction, almost like an archaeological find drawing of a primeval type of human - an association that does not seem inappropriate due to Schiele's interest in existential questions of life.


Egon Schiele's "Female Nude" from 1911 is therefore more than just a nude study: it is an artistic manifesto of Expressionism that shows the human body not as an object of idealised beauty, but as a mirror of inner states. The tension between eroticism and existential loneliness, between formal reduction and psychological depth makes this work an important testimony to his art.

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Provenance

Galerie Würthle, Vienna;
Private collection, Vienna (acquired from the above), 1920s;
Private collection, Vienna (by descent from the above);
Christie's, London, 2022.

Literature

Kallir cat. rais. no. D 882

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