Egon Schiele: the Radical Nude, Courtauld Gallery

This small, but perfectly formed exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery brings together the nudes of Egon Schiele for the first time in the UK.Much mystery surrounds the Austrian Expressionist, who caused controversy with his blatantly erotic paintings and employment of teenage girls as models in provincial Austria where he lived with his lover, Wally, and later his wife,Edith.
His technical brilliance and raw talent caught the attention of Gustav Klimt who took him under his wing, buying his paintings and introducing him to potential patrons. However, his explicit depictions of naked and semi-clothed young girls were divisive and gained him as much negative attention as they did support. In 1912 he was arrested, his paintings seized as pornography, and he was sentenced to three days in jail. Schiele’s prolific career was tragically cut short when he succumbed to Spanish Flu, just three days after his pregnant wife died of the same disease, at the young age of 28.
In his short but intense career, Schiele produced a dark oeuvre, mainly of figures without backgrounds. What shocked many at the time,and what continues to have a vital impact today, is that Schiele's eroticism is not tempered by any sense of romanticism; his figures are imperfect, distorted and anxious. His nudes are among the most impressive and are crucially influential on the development of modern art.