On June 12th 1990, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Egon Schiele, the town of Tulln set up a worthy memorial to its greatest son in opening the Egon Schiele-Museum. The museum is situated directly on the banks of the Danube in Tulln, in the former district prison.
ARTKABINETT collector members will have the opportunity to view many of the artist's works on exhibit here. A very picturesque prison and picnic site for our art-savvy social network.
It was Egon Schiele's stay and his creation of ten striking drawings in the prison cell at Neulengbach that engendered the idea of renovating the former district prison as the Schiele-Museum. Today you can see more than 100 original paintings of Egon Schiele in this museum.
There are four key places that let you come close to Egon Schiele in Europe:
Tthe Belevedere Museum; the Leopold collection in the Vienna Museum Quarter (Discussed in yesterday's AK Files); the Schiele Museum in Tulln (about a half hour west of Vienna, discussed today); and the Schiele Museum in Cesky Krumlov in the Czech Republic (a four hour train ride from Vienna).
The Leopold collection is the most extensive, has many of the well known originals and is the most accessible.
The Tulln Museum is full of facsimiles but has several artifacts from Schiele's life including the museum itself which is the prison where Schiele was incarcerated for lewd behavior.
Schiele began to explore not only the human form, but also human sexuality. At the time, many found the explicitness of his works disturbing.
Some view Schiele's work as being grotesque, erotic, pornographic, or disturbing, focusing on sex, death, and discovery. He focused on portraits of others as well as himself.
In 1911, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Valerie (Wally) Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna and served as model for some of his most striking paintings.
Very little is known of her, except that she had previously modelled for Gustav Klimt and might have been one of his mistresses.
Schiele and Wally (portrait by the artist at right) wanted to escape what they perceived as the claustrophobic Viennese milieu, and went to the small town of Cesk˝ Krumlov (Krumau) in southern Bohemia. Krumau was the birthplace of Schiele's mother; today it is the site of a museum dedicated to Schiele.
Despite Schiele's family connections in Krumau, he and his lover were driven out of the town by the residents, who strongly disapproved of their lifestyle, including his alleged employment of the town's teenage girls as models.
Together they moved to Neulengbach, 35 km west of Vienna, seeking inspirational surroundings and an inexpensive studio in which to work.
As it was in the capital, Schiele's studio became a gathering place for Neulengbach's delinquent children. Schiele's way of life aroused much animosity among the town's inhabitants, and in April 1912 he was arrested for seducing a young girl below the age of consent.
When they came to his studio to place him under arrest, the police seized more than a hundred drawings which they considered pornographic. Schiele was imprisoned while awaiting his trial.
When his case was brought before a judge, the charges of seduction and abduction were dropped, but the artist was found guilty of exhibiting erotic drawings in a place accessible to children.
In court, the judge burned one of the offending drawings over a candle flame. The twenty-one days he had already spent in custody were taken into account, and he was sentenced to only three days' imprisonment.
While in prison, Schiele created a series of 12 paintings depicting the difficulties and discomfort of being locked in a jail-cell.
In 1914, Schiele glimpsed the sisters Edith and AdÈle Harms, who lived with their parents across the street from his studio in the Viennese suburb of Hietzing, 101 Hietzinger Hauptstrasse. They were a middle-class family and Protestant by faith; their father was a master locksmith.
In 1915, Schiele chose to marry the more socially acceptable Edith, but had apparently expected to maintain a relationship with Wally. However, when he explained the situation to Wally, she left him immediately and never saw him again.
This abandonment lead him to paint Death and the Maiden, where Wally's portrait is based on a previous pairing, but Schiele's is newly struck. (In February 1915, Schiele wrote a note to his friend Arthur Roessler stating: "I intend to get married, advantageously, perhaps not to Wally.")
Despite some opposition from the Harms family, Schiele and Edith were married on 17 June 1915, the anniversary of the wedding of Schiele's parents.
World War I now began to shape Schiele's life and work. Three days after his wedding, Schiele was ordered to report for active service in the army, he was initially stationed in Prague. In the army, Schiele was treated well by officers who respected his artistic talent. He never saw any fighting at the front, and was able to continue painting and sketching while guarding Russian prisoners of war, and doing light guard duties.
By 1917, he was back in Vienna, able to focus on his artistic career. His output was prolific, and his work reflected the maturity of an artist in full command of his talents. He was invited to participate in the Secession's 49th exhibition, held in Vienna in 1918.
Schiele had fifty works accepted for this exhibition, and they were displayed in the main hall. He also designed a poster for the exhibition, which was reminiscent of the Last Supper, with a portrait of himself in the place of Christ.
The show was a triumphant success, and as a result, prices for Schiele's drawings increased and he received many portrait commissions.
In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu epidemic that claimed more than 20,000,000 lives in Europe reached Vienna. Edith, who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease on 28 October. Schiele died only three days after his wife. He was 28 years old. During the three days between their deaths, Schiele drew a few sketches of Edith; these were his last works. http://egonschiele.museum.com
