Egon Schiele - sketchbooks

More about the book

Egon Schiele was defined by the renowned art historian Otto Benesch as "one of the most brilliant draftsmen of all time." Benesch's words capture the fundamental aspect of the artist Schiele, who, like no other expressionist painter, was able to give the line a mark of great vigor and incisiveness. The material presented here, with very few exceptions, is considered unpublished. The sketches by Schiele now published are of exceptional importance, as they represent a sort of preparatory process for the painting: many of the over one hundred drawings, watercolors, and paintings, reproduced in large format and in color, are directly related to the sketches. However, many pages contain quick sketches where the sketch-painting relationships are not recognizable. Noteworthy are the many compositional sketches within frames that were not completed, and especially the landscape studies, a subject that is quite rare in Schiele. The publication of Schiele's sketchbooks represents an extraordinarily important work in the context of art history.