Egon Schiele is considered by many to be the greatest draftsman of the 20th century. The undeniable fact, however. that a considerable share of his work is of an explicitly erotic nature has blinded many people to his remarkable ability, so much so that he is primarily known as an Austrian Expressionist artist of the erotic. Schiele’s full artistic flowering lasted only a little over 10 years. He was cut down at the cruelly early age of 28, just as he was about to truly embrace his talent and take it to another level. Schiele’s greatest early influence was the work of his older compatriot Gustav Klimt. His preferred medium was gouache, pencil, and watercolor on coarse-grained, sometimes colored, paper. His oil paintings are relatively few in number. Because he died so oung—aged only 28—art historians can only speculate where Schiele’s more mature talent would have taken him if he had lived to middle, and even old, age.
