The Art of Egon Schiele

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Schiele's pictures still shock us with their linking of eros and thanatos, naked spiritual longings and a neurotic energy that looks and feels contemporary. Pregnant Woman and Death , Two Girls Embracing Each Other , Levitation , Dead City the titles proclaim the obsessions of this Austrian expressionist who died of flu at age 28. First published in English translation in 1975, this monograph has been out of print for more than a decade. It contains some of the finest examples of Schiele's compulsive art, beautifully reproduced in 65 color plates and 108 black-and-whites. Mitsch is curator of Vienna's Albertina Museum. His pon der ous, art-lecture prose catches fire when he discusses Schiele's ``fanatic search for truth'' and the ``powerful, pathetic explosions of feeling'' that haunt his canvases. This volume holds its own against more recent and comprehensive studies of an artist who filtered the lessons of symbolism and Klimt through his own tortured sensibility. (Dec.)