Klimt and Schiele shocked Europe: 100 Years After

Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele were two titans of Viennese art who shared a firm friendship and an artistic free will that scandalised many, writes Cath Pound. At first glance there is little to suggest a connection between Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Klimt was the archetypical sensualist who portrayed Vienna’s elite in gilded finery whilst Schiele, almost three decades his junior, was a tortured egoist whose twisted depictions of the human body shocked and scandalised contemporary audiences. And yet the two men shared a lifelong mutual appreciation and friendship, determined to follow their own artistic visions whatever the cost, until the flu epidemic of 1918 claimed both their lives. –        The dark side of The Kiss –        Wally Neuzil: The secret life of Schiele’s muse –        The mysterious muse of Gustav Klimt Klimt turned his back on the conventions of academic painting. Disillusioned with the stifling restraints of the Künstlerhaus, the artists’ society which all Viennese artists felt obliged to belong to, he and a number of other artists broke away to form the art movement known as the Vienna Secession. Klimt and Schiele: The artists who shocked Europe

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