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Kallir Research Institute Foundation for the study of Austrian & German Expressionism and Self-Taught Art

Egon Schiele’s drawing style grew increasingly volumetric over the course of 1913, with crisp, firm lines replacing the ...
10/17/2026

Egon Schiele’s drawing style grew increasingly volumetric over the course of 1913, with crisp, firm lines replacing the delicate pencil and two-dimensional orientation of the previous year. In Schiele's watercolors from this period, flesh tends to be lightly touched with color, while thicker washes describe hair or garments.

Heavy pencil outlining distinguishes the subject from the background of “Standing Man Draped in Red Shawl,” and the subject’s flesh is “sculpted” from thin veils of color applied with a relatively dry brush. The inscribed title is rather uncommon for Schiele: with the exception of the 1912 prison drawings and a handful of late-1913 works, the Austrian artist almost never titled his works on paper.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Standing Man Draped in Red Shawl,” 1913, gouache and pencil on Japan paper.

Gustav Klimt began work on this portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl in 1913-14, focusing first on her face and shoulders. Pro...
10/13/2026

Gustav Klimt began work on this portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl in 1913-14, focusing first on her face and shoulders. Progress on the commission was paused when Amalie, then in her forties, followed her husband, Dr. Otto Zuckerkandl, to Lvov to serve as a nurse in his hospital during WWI. Upon the couple’s return to Vienna in 1917, Klimt resumed work on the frontal likeness, sketching in pencil plans for Amalie’s dress, the placement of her hands and further adornments. Such plans were never seen through, however, due to Klimt’s premature death in February 1918, from pneumonia following a stroke.

🎨 Image: Gustav Klimt, “Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl (unfinished),” 1913-14/1917-18, oil on canvas; Belvedere, Vienna.

While still living under the same roof, Egon Schiele and his younger sister, Gerti, were all but inseparable. Gerti also...
10/10/2026

While still living under the same roof, Egon Schiele and his younger sister, Gerti, were all but inseparable. Gerti also ranked among Egon’s most important early models, continuing to pose for her artist brother even after he’d moved out. Schiele’s ongoing project of revealing character and psychological state through expressive gesture was well served by Gerti’s willingness to playact, along with her experience as an occasional fashion model for the Wiener Werkstätte.

In this 1910 example, executed when the artist and model were about 20 and 16, respectively, Egon’s selective coloring draws the viewer’s eye to his sister’s profile. White “haloes” like the one framing Gerti’s head appear with some regularity in Egon’s 1910 and 1911 oeuvre, but do not recur thereafter.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Gerti Schiele, the Artist’s Sister, in Profile Facing Left,” 1910, watercolor and black crayon with white heightening on paper.

The rounded, flowing lines, two-dimensionality, and ornamental signature of this 1909 watercolor reveal young Egon Schie...
10/08/2026

The rounded, flowing lines, two-dimensionality, and ornamental signature of this 1909 watercolor reveal young Egon Schiele’s artistic debt to Jugendstil, the Germanic interpretation of Art Nouveau. At the same time, this work hints at the “Expressionist breakthrough” that was to come in the following year.

Without overpowering the uncolored portions of the sheet, Schiele has added touches of vivid color. While his color choices would soon grow even less naturalistic, those seen here are already somewhat unexpected.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Standing Woman Combing Her Long Red Hair, Back View,” 1909, watercolor and pencil on paper.

“The great simplicity of form—that is something wonderful,” Paula Modersohn-Becker wrote in her journal in February 1903...
10/06/2026

“The great simplicity of form—that is something wonderful,” Paula Modersohn-Becker wrote in her journal in February 1903, during her second visit to Paris. “Ever since I can remember, I have tried to give the simplicity of nature to the heads I paint or draw. Now I feel deeply how I can learn from the heads of antiquity.”⁠
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On each of Modersohn-Becker’s four stays in the French capital (1900, 1903, 1905, and 1906-07), she made early morning trips to the Louvre, where she studied and sketched ancient Greek and Egyptian artifacts. As the young German painter absorbed the visual influences of Paris’s museums and contemporary galleries, she honed a unique approach to portraiture, marked by simple, stylized physicality.

🎨 Image: Paula Modersohn-Becker, “Selbstbildnis nach halblinks,” 1906, oil tempera on paper mounted on cardboard.

As he had in the previous year, Egon Schiele continued to gravitate toward ambitious, multi-figural compositions in his ...
10/03/2026

As he had in the previous year, Egon Schiele continued to gravitate toward ambitious, multi-figural compositions in his 1912 allegorical oils. Schiele’s symbols are mysterious and deeply personal, drawing upon Catholic iconography and his own perspective on art and the role of the artist.

In both its complexity and its overall composition, “Conversion” connects with Schiele's 1911 allegories. Here we see a reversion to the pseudo-cubistic geometric segmentation Schiele applied to certain earlier canvases. The coloring, however, is brighter, lightened a thinner application of paint. The art historian Alessandra Comini has suggested that the male figure might be a self-portrait, while one of the females may be Schiele’s collaborator and romantic partner, Wally Neuzil.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Conversion,” 1912, oil on canvas.

Egon Schiele produced relatively few watercolors in 1918, instead concentrating on drawing’s intrinsic monochromatic qua...
10/01/2026

Egon Schiele produced relatively few watercolors in 1918, instead concentrating on drawing’s intrinsic monochromatic qualities. The Austrian artist at once strove for simplicity, capturing his subjects in minimal, largely unbroken strokes, and for increased volumetric detail.

Reclining on some unseen support, the model in the drawing pictured here meets the gaze of the artist (and by extension, the viewer). Schiele has taken care to detail the folds and lace edges of her garment, but intentionally omitted her foot and the bent arm on which she presumably rests.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Woman Leaning Back,” 1918, black crayon on paper.

🥁 Let us dance the Carmagnole/Long live the sound of the cannon!⁠Käthe Kollwitz's “Die Carmagnole” (1901) references a r...
09/29/2026

🥁 Let us dance the Carmagnole/Long live the sound of the cannon!
⁠
Käthe Kollwitz's “Die Carmagnole” (1901) references a rallying cry of a bygone century. The song celebrates the 1792 capture of the northern Italian town of Carmagnola by French Revolutionaries. Kollwitz connects the economic inequity of 18th-century France to the social conditions of her own time and place: the buildings in the etching’s background are recognizably in the artist’s native Germany.
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🎨 Image: Käthe Kollwitz, "Die Carmagnole (Dance Around the Guillotine)," 1901, etching and drypoint.

Having not yet fully mastered the difficult medium of watercolor, Egon Schiele still relied heavily on gouache (which is...
09/26/2026

Having not yet fully mastered the difficult medium of watercolor, Egon Schiele still relied heavily on gouache (which is less moist, and easier to control) in his early 1911 works on paper. The Austrian artist tended to densely limn hair and drapery, describing flesh with thinner washes of pigment.

Sleeping or perhaps lost in thought, the subject of “Boy” fills the sheet on which he appears, his truncated legs understood to extend beyond the lowermost edge. The faint pencil lines under his right arm suggest the presence of an armrest, though Schiele offers no other indication of a chair, nor of any other surroundings.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Boy,” 1911, gouache, watercolor, and pencil on paper.

Disillusioned with the rigid, old-fashioned curriculum of the Vienna Academy, Egon Schiele and a group of like-minded fe...
09/24/2026

Disillusioned with the rigid, old-fashioned curriculum of the Vienna Academy, Egon Schiele and a group of like-minded fellow students penned a formal letter of protest and withdrew en masse in spring 1909. Schiele would cofound the “Neukunstgruppe” (new art group) in June of that year, and the new, deeply personal drawing style he embraced in 1910 further distanced him from the academic establishment.

Pictured here is “Neukunstgruppe” writer Andreas Thom (the pseudonym of Rudolf Csmarich). The angle of the portrait surprises: Schiele positioned himself slightly above Thom and drew him in bold crayon strokes. The artist has captured something of his subject’s personality along with his likeness, emphasizing Thom’s evident confidence and erudition.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Andreas Thom, Writer,” 1910, black crayon on paper, Wien Museum, Vienna.

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