From Library Journal
Austrian Expressionist painter Schiele (1890-1918) broke away from the decorative Vienna Secession style, especially that of Gustav Klimt, and developed his own technique using simple lines and bold colors to express intensity of emotions, suffering, and isolation. Schiele's obsession with sexuality and death is seen in the artist's self-portraits and nude female studies characterized by grotesque grimaces, contorted limbs, exposed genitals, and sorrowful, often corpselike expressions. Schiele's final work, a chilling drawing of his wife on her deathbed, exemplifies his superb draftsmanship. This catalog for a recent exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) presents the most extensive collection of Schiele's work, held in the Leopold Museum in Vienna. The collector who founded the Austrian museum, Leopold contributes insightful textual notes for the 152 color plates, while MOMA curator Dabrowski provides the clear introduction. Strongly recommended for general and modern art history collections.?Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
The art collection of Rudolf Leopold, displayed in this volume, well represents the brilliant draftsmanship, idiosyncratic color, and intense, often neurotic power of Schiele's work. Ms. Dabrowski's introduction tells enough about the painter's family background to account for his sexually morbid self-portraits and enough about turn-of-the-century Viennese society to account for his épater le bourgeois female nudes. Schiele was under thirty when he died in the flu epidemic of 1918. One can only wonder where his art would have gone in the 1920s, because in some respects he was already ahead of them.
