Akt 1917

Egon Schiele made this nude figure with pencil and watercolor, using delicate strokes of color and an economy of line. I can imagine him crouched over this drawing, squinting, holding the pencil just so… Maybe he was thinking about what it means to see, to really see, another person. How do you capture not just their physical form, but also something of their inner self, their vulnerability? It is, like, a raw emotionality. I’m sure he felt that in his own life, which was cut short when he died during the Spanish Flu epidemic. I wonder if Schiele was consciously emulating Gustav Klimt, a fellow Austrian artist whom he admired and who was also a mentor. It is possible, in a way, that Schiele was also trying to ‘out-Klimt’ Klimt! You know, to push beyond the master's accomplishments and find his own voice in a world of art-historical possibilities. In any case, he was working with similar themes of sexuality, mortality, and human experience. Painting is like that - a conversation with the past and a reaching towards the future.