After Egon Schiele (1890-1918) freed himself from the shadow of his mentor and role model Gustav Klimt, he had just ten years to inscribe his signature style into the annals of modernity before the Spanish flu claimed his life. Being a child prodigy quite aware of his own genius and a passionate provocateur, this didn-t prove to be too big a challenge.
His haggard, overstretched figures, drastic depiction of sexuality, and self-portraits in which he staged himself with emaciated facial expressions bordering between brilliance and madness, had none of the decorative quality of Klimt-s hymns of love, sexuality, and yearning devotion. Instead, Schiele-s work spoke of a brutal honesty, one that would upset and irreversibly change Viennese society.
Although his works were later defamed as -degenerate- and for a time were al
