EGON SCHIELE

In 2018, 100 years after his death, a special exhibition is dedicated to the central artist of the Leopold Museum’s collection, Egon Schiele (1890–1918): unique in its combination of paintings, works on paper and archival material, the exhibition touches upon the most important themes in the artist’s oeuvre: first of all, his self-confident breaking with traditions and his evolution as an expressive artist, followed by motivic groups including the ambivalent figure of the mother and the taboo-breaking depictions of young girls and boys, themes such as spirituality and metamorphosis, his enigmatic houses and landscapes, as well as his tension-filled and complex analyses in his portrait depictions. The emphases of the exhibition are derived from those of the history-making Leopold collections: in terms of the oil paintings and works on paper, the emphasis is on the Expressionist years from 1910–1914, with a third of the works on paper each dedicated to his self-portraits, his portraits and nude renderings of girls and finally those of grown-up women. The paintings, meanwhile, touch upon all the themes mentioned above. Along with the comprehensive museum collection, whose works on paper will be shown in three separate stages for conservational reasons, individual eminent Schiele works from international collections will feature in the jubilee exhibition as “noble guests”.