Crescent of Houses II (Island Town)

1915 · Leopold Museum, Vienna

landscape

Viewed from the castle hill at Krumau - today's Cesk Krumlov - this curved cluster of houses can be precisely identified. To make them stand out clearly, the painter omitted the houses in the background and the bridge and opposite bank with St Jodocus's Church. His concern was not to represent the topography but to draw, with a cubist touch, a maze-like network of angular lines whose compositional centre is located on the island-like peninsula.

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About the Artist

Egon Schiele

1890 – 1918

Austrian painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He is, with Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), one of the major figures of Austrian Expressionism, despite the brevity of his artistic career, which lasted only about ten years. While remaining faithful to the initial influences on his work of the Vienna Secession, and in particular of the art of Gustav Klimt, he developed a personal and expressive style. He introduced psychologically and sexually intense subject matter that was radical in its subjectivity and highly influential on later generations of artists. His distinctly personal style made him one of the most important representatives of early Viennese Expressionism. His oeuvre includes landscapes, portraits, and above all, nudes, which were considered scandalous in his day.

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