Seated female nude with elbows propped 1914

Egon Schiele made this ‘Seated female nude with elbows propped’ sometime around 1914 using pencil and watercolor. What strikes me is how Schiele fearlessly renders the human form with such honesty. It’s like he’s not just drawing what he sees, but also what he feels. Look at how he uses these wiry, almost jagged lines to define her body, they're not gentle curves, but sharp angles. There’s a sense of urgency in the way he applies the watercolor washes, leaving patches of bare paper untouched. It's like a performance, where each mark is a gesture, and the final image is a record of that process. Her dark stockings and shoes contrast with the pale pinks of her skin. It's like he’s stripping away the layers, getting to the raw essence of what it means to be human. It reminds me of Lucian Freud, who similarly captured the vulnerability and intensity of his sitters with uncompromising honesty. Both show art as a place for us to confront ourselves. There's no one way to read this image, and its beauty lies in its openness to interpretation.