Schiele Catalogue Lores Waterm

Egon Schiele. Women. Egon Schiele. Women. Preface by Richard Nagy Chronology by Jane Kallir Essay by Jill Lloyd RICHARD NAGY LTD 22 Old Bond Street, London, W1S 4PY Preface by Richard Nagy I am often asked how my interest in Egon Schiele began and Leopold, Vienna and Serge Sabarsky, New York; on the other, at about $120,000. Having to catch a plane back to London, For me, the attraction of mounting a Schiele exhibition how I came to the place I am in this particular world. Wolfgang Fischer, London and Galerie St Etienne, New York, I left impromptu, empty-handed. Later that evening I had focusing on women is a combination of two things: the artist’s run by Jane Kallir, the grand daughter of Otto Kallir (the first a call from the Professor who barked at me, “Every time I see rebelliousness and the most exciting drawings of women done My paternal family emigrated from Hungary to Australia when great Schiele scholar) and her indomitable partner Hildegard you it costs me a lot of money! Why don’t you call me before in western art history. Schiele’s incomparable genius puts him at my father was twenty. He was born in Budapest, when it was Bachert, with seventy years experience in the Schiele world and the sales and we can buy together.” This was the beginning the forefront of the artistic rebellion. By 1910 he arrived as an still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a month before Egon more knowledge of where the bodies are buried than any other. of a collaboration that lasted until his death last year. Expressionist, exhibiting a virtuoso use of line in psychologically Schiele died. I imbibed something of that world along with the penetrating, sexually explicit figures. This need to draw such Wiener Schnitzel and sour cherry strudel from my childhood. Enter Ian Peterson - the first watercolour I ever bought was There has been another collector who particularly stands subjects was informed by his youthful erotic energy as much on his behalf, a drawing from 1910 - Portrait of a Gentleman, out in my brilliant career, the New Yorker, Benedict Silverman, Of Egon Schiele specifically - I was given a monograph of as by his need to cock a snook at the art establishment. later to be identified as Otto Freund. It still ranks among the a man with whom I share a peculiar sensibility. We have his life and work in 1971, while still at school, at a time when best works by the artist I have handled. This Australian of a synchronicity of response to works of art, particularly with The contemporary critics who labeled his art pathological drawing was already an interest. The economy of Schiele’s rare sensibility, a collector new to the work of Schiele, had regard to Schiele but also in remote and diverse fields. His were products of their age that could not look for seeing the line was an extraordinary revelation, which I still remember the eye to recognise the exceptional quality of the artist. He collection, once described by a pompous auction employee forbidden. Today there is still much written about Schiele that well, and the images of his women were so authentic that they has become a good friend and has travelled the distance with as more an accumulation, is of such high quality that every harps back to the pathological - pop psychologists who see malady communicated intuitively. Unlike some artists I enjoyed at that me, still actively collecting. His generosity has been such that modern museum would be proud to hang any one work from where there is none. time, Schiele inspired a curiosity that defied any weariness born for the last twenty-five years there has hardly been a month it. He has always picked the most intense and essential works of familiarity. I never tire of seeing his works time and time In all of art history there are few examples of women when one of his works has not been exhibited in a museum of an artist’s oeuvre, and when engaged in pursuit has always again. This interest was dormant but clearly vital for many represented by male artists where there is an equality of power somewhere in the world. I owe him thanks for trusting the gone the full nine yards. His Schiele works are all exceptional years, before I had any thought of becoming an art dealer. Little between the artist and his subject; Schiele is one of them. His eye of an evolving art dealer. Schiele became a major interest and a singular pleasure for me to re-visit. did I know then that many of the works illustrated in that first youth and his lack of social and financial standing meant he was for him too, and for a period of time we pursued every major book would pass through my hands; some of them appear here Within the Schiele art dealing community there is a person not far removed from the street girls he drew. By 1910 he was work that appeared on the market. It was the beginning of my alongside the other works that have all been through my gallery. of excellence, Jane Kallir, with whom I have had nothing but an outsider as they were: a figure reviled by the establishment obsessive desire to know the circumstances of every Schiele that It gives me enormous pleasure to see them again. good experiences for more than two decades. I regard her as and cut off by his guardian. In the same way that the girls and was offered for sale anywhere. At this time we first locked horns a friend as well as a colleague. I would like to thank her here women he depicted were invisible in society, so was he. By 1980 I was already taking note of works passing through the with the omnipresent Professor Rudolf Leopold, often in Bern for her support and contribution to this exhibition. major auction houses while spending my commercial energy at Eberhard Kornfeld’s, where, unfortunately for us, we came Despite the ubiquity of pornography during his time, sexual on Old Master Rpaintings, particularly ItalianICHARD Baroque painting. second more often than not and received the consolation prize NI have beenAGY fortunate to have a rapport with most of the Lhypocrisy was rifeTD within Viennese society and Schiele was Though worlds apart, the expressionist sentiment of the one for persistent under-bidding, the rose. characters in this historically divided and distinctly eccentric determined to address it. This hypocrisy that the artist tackled informed the other. Having concluded that the supply of Old world. a century ago is still evident, albeit in the form of disguised I still had not met the Professor but knew him by sight and Masters of the quality I aspired to handle was diminishing liberalism, thereby striking a chord with artists and youth today. reputation. On getting to know him later, I understood he had Egon Schiele. Women. I decided to do this exhibition some rapidly, I turned to an area with a steady flow of great work, Ironically, Schiele is now a recognized inclusion in the canon the most reliable and intuitive eye when looking at a work by time ago, though it took a long time to coalesce. There has not where I could indulge my passion for Expressionism and Egon of twentieth-century private art collecting and drawings have Schiele or purporting to be by Schiele. been an exhibition dedicated to the artist in London for two Schiele. In the mid nineteen-eighties the commercial Schiele sold at public auction for an excess of $11,000,000. decades. More surprising is the fact that a void still remains in world was dominated by two camps: on the one hand, Rudolf In the late nineteen-eighties I had seen a small advertisement British public collections. Eight months ago I thought I would At the time of his death, aged twenty-eight, Schiele had left a for a wonderfully sensitive pencil drawing by Schiele for sale launch the new gallery in Old Bond Street with a general Egon profound impact on a reluctant art world. Being hailed a hero in Munich; I entered the auction house only to be upbraided Schiele show which became more refined as I looked to do an by both artists and sophisticated collectors today would not have by the Professor - he demanded to know why I was there. The exhibition previously unaddressed; hence the theme of women - surprised the artist who was utterly confident that he would be drawing was estimated at 20,000 Deutschmarks (about $10,000). surprisingly absent from Schiele’s exhibition history since almost recognized as the genius he knew himself to be. His drawings, Previous page I began to bid when the work was about to be hammered down half the artist’s oeuvre depicts women in one way or another. so rooted in their zeitgeist, are contemporary, even timeless. 1 Double Self Portrait, 1910 to Leopold at $20,000; we traded bids until he won the work Biographical Chronology by Jane Kallir 1903 Griepenkerl, a notoriously harsh and conservative painter of the old school. The mutual antipathy that develops between the two 1890 sole venue for exhibiting contemporary art) founds the Vienna Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser co-found the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), a crafts collective intended to prompts the young artist to skip class regularly. On 12 June, Egon Schiele is born, the first and only surviving Secession. Other than the philosophy embodied in its forward- explore more intensively the union of the fine and applied arts Schiele has his first small exhibition in Klosterneuburg son of Adolf and Marie (nee Soukup) Schiele.

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