Umbrella Carré Delos Aurillac "La femme de l'artiste" by'Egon SCHIELE

The artist's biography

The artist’s wife – Egon Schiele – 1890/1918

Egon Schiele began painting in 1905, mostly doing portraits of friends or self-portraits. In 1907, he met Gustav Klimt, who took an interest in him, serving as his model and teacher. Both men deeply admired each other.

He produced numerous works, which were remarkable from the point of view of the drawings. This one is very sharp, with a bold, energetic, firm and even violent line at times. Egon Schiele’s knowledge of the human body is all the more remarkable because he does not make the skeleton disappear behind the flesh; he draws it in the continuity of its movements and postures, thus giving it three dimensions. Furthermore, his portraits and nudes are set in unusual or even grotesque poses, as Egon Schiele had studied patients’ attitudes in a psychiatric asylum and the positions of string puppets, which is what gives that special ‘dislocated’ aspect to some of the characters in his art.

Spectators considered his paintings provocative at the time, which undoubtedly continues even today, because they generate a certain malaise in their relation to eroticism and death, as well as the greenish shades of decomposition.