Egon Schiele: Tod und Mädchen

‘This is appalling!’, the emperor is said to have exclaimed when he saw a work of art by Egon Schiele for the first time. The influential and controversial painter is at the centre of this meticulous and atmospheric portrait, which paints the picture of a radical innovator and obsessive creator over a period of ten years - surrounded by death (that of his father and that of countless soldiers in the First World War) and even more by ‘girls’, who also represent his muses and thus occupy a central place in the life and work of the ‘Viennese modernist’. Berner's view of Schiele focuses on the ‘field of tension between provocation and claim, between expression and justification, ultimately between art and legitimisation’ (Alexandra Zawia). (Florian Widegger)