Egon Schiele: self-portrait, 1911

10 SELECTED SELF-PORTRAITS

(in chronological order)

Albert Dürer: Self-portrait as an Ecce Homo, c.1500

Leonardo da Vinci: Self-portrait, c.1512

Rembrandt van Rijn: Self-portrait, 1659

Vincent van Gogh: Self-portrait with bandaged ear, 1889

Pablo Picasso: Self-portrait, 1901

Egon Schiele: Self-portrait, 1911

Max Beckmann: Self-portrait with glass of champagne, 1919

Frida Kahlo: The broken column (Self-portrait), 1944

Francis Bacon: Self-portrait, 1971

Jean-Michelle Basquiat: Self-portrait, 1982

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6. EGON SCHIELE: “self-portrait”, 1911 - watercolour, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (www.metmuseum.org)

Egon Schiele: self-portrait, 1911

Died at only 28 years of age, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is perhaps the most expressionist of all the expressionist painters, author of disturbing figures in tortured foreshortenings, bodies mutilated according to the aims of the artist. His obsession for the “obscure” and even the obscene (masculine figures masturbating, nude female bodies in explicit postures) scandalized many, but he also got the admiration –though not always admitted- of his contemporaries. Even the much admired Klimt had to admit that the young Schiele was “a better draughtsman than me”.

“My being, my decomposition, transplanted to permanent values, must produce my force in other more developed beings (…) I am so rich I have to give me to others” No other figure satisfies the artist as much as his own one, he enjoys his self-representation and wishes the world to see it. Schiele, the brutal narcissist, even removes the picture's background, annulling any distraction that could compete with his “permanent me”.

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