Klimt and Schiele: Drawings (Museum of Fine Arts,Boston)

Eloquent and provocative drawings, exquisitely reproduced, provide an intimate encounter with these two daring Austrian masters. Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele were two of the most daring and controversial artists in Vienna during the culturally turbulent decades around the turn of the 20th century. They worked out their provocative depictions of the human body, created in a search for psychological truth as well as physical realism, in the direct and intimate medium of drawing. In Klimt’s studies, the distinctive character or unsettling emotional resonance of the person portrayed comes through in the artist’s delicate, sinuous lines. The striking presence of the individual in Schiele’s more finished drawings, often rendered with extreme frankness and bold colouration, pulses with dramatic immediacy. Although Klimt was almost thirty years Schiele’s senior, he quickly recognized and encouraged the younger artist’s extraordinary talent. The sixty important works exquisitely reproduced in large format in this volume reach from each artist’s early academic studies to more incisive and unconventional explorations of nature, psychology, sexuality and spirituality. Aby giving viewers access to these artists’ worlds, this album of unforgettable drawings provides a direct connection to the minds of two master draftsmen exploring the limits of representation, as well as the shock of recognition at seeing our own inner lives caught on paper.