Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter and protégé of Gustav Klimt who became a central figure of early 20th-century Austrian Expressionism. Noted for his feverish intensity, sharp angular draftsmanship, and raw psychological vulnerability, Schiele's work confronted taboos surrounding sexuality, mortality, and the human psyche.

His piercing self-portraits and provocative nudes stripped away bourgeois decorative comfort, reflecting the deep existential angst of Vienna at the dusk of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Schiele's incandescent career was cut tragically short when he succumbed to the global Spanish Flu epidemic at the age of just 28, mere days after his pregnant wife Edith.