545 - Egon Schiele (1890 Tulln/Danube – Vienna 1918)

Egon Schiele (1890 Tulln/Danube – Vienna 1918) Seated Woman with Black Hair Pencil and colored chalk on brownish packing paper. (19)09. Approx. 44.5 x 31.5 cm. Signed and dated lower right. On the reverse, marked “52860 / kbg” by another hand. Kallir D 266. • From the formative year of 1909 • Schiele finds his artistic voice and demonstrates it powerfully • Through ornamental flattening, he breaks free from the constraints of Art Nouveau 1909 was a formative year for Schiele. He began to break free from the visual conventions of Art Nouveau and set out in search of his own style. This evolution would ultimately result in portraits and self-portraits featuring his famous contorted and twisted limbs. At first, however, his attempts at breaking free are more tentative. They lead to experiments with style, color, and materials, through which the young man succeeds in solidifying his artistic voice. He depicts our “Seated Woman with Black Hair” in an almost statuette-like manner. Facing us head-on and from a slight low angle, she sits with her hands resting in her lap. Her body is outlined by a fine line, with the internal details reduced to the bare essentials. Beyond the tip of her nose, however, Schiele draws the figure out of the refined line work: he renders the eyes and eyebrows clearly and piercingly on the paper, while the hairstyle ultimately culminates as a dominant field of color. Here we already see the Schiele who, a short time later, would use color as a constitutive element of composition. Color, which transforms individual details of the motif into ornamental elements of the picture, absorbs all subtleties and depth, thereby abstracting the now-flattened subject into a visual end in itself. Thus, as early as 1909, Egon Schiele demonstrated his masterful command of the interplay between representation and the represented. Exhibition: Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele. Dessins et Aquarelles, Salle Saint-Jean, Hôtel de Ville, Paris/Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, among others, 1984–85, cat. no. 61; Egon Schiele, Egon Schiele Art Centrum, Český Krumlov 1993–1996; Egon Schiele, National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík 1996; Egon Schiele. The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections, Neue Galerie, New York 2005/06, cat. no. D15, color ill. p. 206. Provenance: Hassfurther, Vienna, March 31, 1984, Lot 124; Serge Sabarsky Collection/Estate, New York, acquired from the aforementioned; Vally Sabarsky Collection/Foundation, New York. Taxation: subject to regular taxation (VAT: Regular Taxation).