Klimt/Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Royal Academy

Provocative, radical, scandalous: these are words that unite Austrian Modernists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. In early 20th-century bohemian Vienna, both artists challenged convention and form, distorted the body and endeavoured to create the most erotic art on the market – Schiele was later imprisoned for exhibiting pornographic material to minors.

The two had an unorthodox relationship from the start. Schiele's bold experimentation with the human form and human sexuality soon attracted Klimt's attention. Taking Schiele under his wing, he mentored the young artist in his early years, asking Shiele to exhibit with him in the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau exhibition. Despite Klimt’s 28-year seniority, they would go on to enjoy an intimate friendship, sharing their patrons, mistresses and muses. Both artists died in 1918.

On the centenary-year of their deaths, Klimt and Schiele’s exquisite and fragile drawings are on display for the first time in the UK. The Royal Academy's Klimt / Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum, Vienna examines the divergences and parallels between the artists' practice.

Through a display of over 100 works on paper, the exhibition explores notions of eroticism, subjectivity and isolation. The sketches are diverse in theme: nudes, landscapes and erotic drawings are on show alongside the artists’ sketchbooks, graphic designs, lithographs and photographs. Highlights include Klimt’s sketches for his seminal Beethoven Frieze, and a series of unflinching self-portraits by Schiele.

For all these comparisons, Klimt and Schiele’s creative processes and final works are very different. While many of Klimt’s drawings were made in preparation for his paintings, Schiele valued his drawings in-and-of-themselves, selling them as independent works of art. Although both are frankly naturalistic, raw and explicit at times, their styles vary. Klimt is delicate, Schiele bold.

Austria’s two most famous artists succeeded in challenging expectation. One hundred years on, this exhibition shows that they are as radical as ever.