Summer Landscape, Krumau 1917

Egon Schiele made this painting of Krumau, a town in Bohemia, with oil on canvas, and it’s interesting how he used the materials to create something both familiar and strange. Schiele’s color choices are surprising. He uses yellows, reds and blues to build the form in a way that is both representational and totally abstract. Look at the roofs and the houses—each plane is a new color, a new experience. You can feel the hand of the artist here, the way the brushstrokes build up the image. The painting has a frenetic quality, like it was made in a hurry, capturing a fleeting moment, a memory. I’m reminded of Gustav Klimt. Schiele, his protege, adopts Klimt’s flattened perspective but intensifies the color to something altogether new. Both artists seem to understand that art is an ongoing conversation, and the best work embraces ambiguity.