Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts Gustav Klimt. Exhibition of Klimt and Schiele: the difference between art and obscenity. Klimt and Schiele

The work "Reclining Nude Girl" at the exhibition of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin, October 2017

In the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin Museum hosts a large-scale exhibition of graphic works by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele from the collection of the Albertina Museum (Vienna). The founder of Viennese Art Nouveau, an admirer of women, Gustav Klimt and his student, a preacher of Austrian expressionism, a lover of teenagers Egon Schiele - both artists explored the human body, its nature and beauty. Conservative contemporaries accused Klimt of excessive eroticism, and Schille of distributing pornography. The teacher and student died in the same year - in 1918, when Klimt was 55 years old and Schiele - 28. The exhibition at the Pushkin Museum will run until January 14th. Gazeta.Ru tells about artists, their habits, life and death.

Gustav Klimt. death and life

Klimt was not at all like an artist: tall, powerful figure, strong hands, baggy clothes - his whole rough appearance resembled a peasant. A native of the Vienna suburb of Baumgarten, Gustav was the second of seven children in a poor family of the artist-engraver, jeweler Ernest Klimt and the failed musician Anna Klimt. He studied at the Vienna Art and Craft School at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, painted frescoes for theaters in Reichenberg, Rijeka, Karlovy Vary; worked on the design of the building "Burgtheater" and the Museum of Art and History. Honorary member of the Munich and Vienna universities, founder and president of the Vienna Secession.

Gustav Klimt. Virgin

Klimt loved women and never married. From 3 to 40 children are attributed to him - after the death of the artist, 14 people declared the rights to the inheritance.

The female body has become not only the object of the artist's passion, but also the main theme of his work. Klimt perfectly felt the female nature and with the help of outfits turned any woman into a beauty. His styles were a discovery at the Venice Exhibition of 1910. Contemporaries, for their part, accused the artist of provocations and disregard for moral standards:
in their opinion, Klimt depicted women too erotically and frankly.

For 27 years, the main muse of the artist remained fashion designer Emilia Flege - he came up with ornaments for her dresses, and she, despite Klimt's relationship with other women, was with him until the last days.

Gustav Klimt. Golden Adele

Portrait of Klimt's mistress

Portrait of the wife of Ferdinand Bloch, with which Klimt had an affair, the artist wrote for 4 years. During this time he made over 100 sketches. Painting "Golden Adele", also known as the "Austrian Mona Lisa", became a masterpiece, and the novel, meanwhile, faded away. In 2006, the painting was acquired by Ronald Lauder, an American entrepreneur and founder of the New Gallery in New York. The price of the lot was a record amount for a painting - $ 135 million. In 2015, the film "Woman in Gold" was made about this work.

Gustav Klimt. Paintings for the university

Allegories of Klimt

In 1884, Klimt began extensive work on paintings for the ceiling of the assembly hall of the main building of the University of Vienna. After 6 years, in 1900, he presented the world with allegorical "faculty" canvases: "Philosophy", "Medicine" and "Jurisprudence". The audience in response criticized the artist for the "pornographic theme" - the work did not appear at the university, after all the twists and turns in a private collection. In 1945, the paintings were destroyed in a fire at the Immerhof Palace.

Gustav Klimt. naked truth

The truth of Klimt

Painting "Naked Truth" became a challenge to society at the end of the 19th century. Depicted in full growth, a naked red-haired woman holds a mirror of truth in her hands, offering viewers, as conceived by the artist, to look inside themselves. Above the mirror is a quote from the German poet Friedrich Schiller: “If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please few. To be liked by many is evil.

Gustav Klimt. Kiss

Hitler Klimt

Adolf Hitler, who was fond of painting, once showed Klimt his work. The artist reacted favorably to the work of the future Fuhrer, and subsequently this meeting saved the paintings of the "Jewish artist" from destruction.

Egon Schiele. Nude self-portrait, grimace. 1910

Klimt and Schiele

Schiele met Klimt at the age of 17 while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts. Klimt patronized a student whom he considered "too talented": he shared his models, bought and exchanged his drawings. Egon idolized the teacher and at first imitated him. But if Klimt's work was scolded for being too erotic, Schiele was directly reproached for distributing child pornography. The artist defiantly frankly and in detail painted dysfunctional teenagers, including girls who lived in his studio for a long time, as well as his younger sister Gerta, for whom he had strong feelings at the age of 16.

The first exhibition of Schiele was held in 1908 in Klosterneuburg (not without the participation of Klimt), in 1909 the artist's works were exhibited together with paintings by Munch, Van Gogh and Matisse in the Vienna Art Gallery. In addition to children, Schiele, carried away by the ideas of Freudism and the study of human nature, liked to draw himself. His numerous caricatured grotesque self-portraits are known. The artist paid special attention to the hands and gestures - often sharp, nervous and refined.

Egon Schiele. dying mother

Shile's mother

Son of a railroad worker Egon Schiele All his life he suffered from the loss of his father, who died when the young man was 15 years old. The future artist did not have a relationship with his mother - she gave her son to the family of her uncle-guardian.

The theme of death was present in Schiele's work throughout his life, including in the work "The Dying Mother", which Egon wrote in 1910, when his mother was alive and well. The painting depicts a pale woman with a bony arm and a rosy-cheeked child who is separated from her mother by a black cocoon.

"Portrait of Valley" (1912)

Şile Prison

In 1911, the 17-year-old model, the former Klimt model Wally Neuzil, became the artist’s girlfriend and model, and in 1912 Schiele spent several months in prison on charges of molesting a minor. There he created a series of 13 watercolors and drawings. The artist was philosophical about his conclusion and said that he felt “not guilt, but only purification.”

Wally's portraits have become the artist's most notable works.

Egon Schiele. A family

Death of Schiele

In 1915, the artist broke up with Valerie and married a young schoolgirl, the daughter of a locksmith Edith Harms, despite the protests of the girl's family. Three years later, Edith died of a Spanish flu while pregnant. In his latest work - A family" - Schiele portrayed himself, his wife and their unborn child. After 3 days, the artist died from the same disease. He was 28 years old.

At the first large-scale exhibition of works by both artists in Russia, about 100 sheets from the collection of the Albertina Museum (Vienna) are shown: 47 works by Gustav Klimt and 49 by Egon Schiele

Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin
October 10, 2017 - January 14, 2018
Gallery of European and American ArtXIX–XX centuries

Today at the Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin opens an exhibition of graphic works of the largest representatives of Austrian art of the early XX century Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) and Egon Schiele (1890-1918).

The works selected for the exhibition belong to different periods of the artist's work and represent different types of drawing - sketches of figures associated with paintings, portraits, independent studies of a nude female model, etc. Using traditional graphic techniques - black chalk, graphite pencil, watercolor, gouache - the artists solved the new aesthetic problems that confronted them at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Gustav Klimt, the main representative of Viennese Art Nouveau, enjoyed a reputation as a phenomenal draftsman who secured a very special place for himself not only in Austrian, but also in world art. His drawings influenced the work of younger artists, especially Egon Schiele, who began his career at a time when Klimt had already reached the pinnacle of his work. Having learned the experience of his predecessor, Schiele very early acquired his own unique style, which marked the transition from Art Nouveau to Expressionism.

Klimt's drawings were very popular among art connoisseurs and collectors in the years immediately before and after his death (the artist passed away in 1918). Over time, Klimt the draftsman found himself in the shadow of Klimt the painter, but today the study of his graphic heritage has made it possible to fully appreciate the role of drawing in the master's work. After Klimt's death, about 2,500 drawings remained in his studio - something that he himself did not sell, give away or destroy. In total, more than 4,000 drawings by the artist are currently known.

A significant part of Klimt's drawings is associated with one or another pictorial work of the master. The artist himself almost never spoke about his creative ideas either verbally or in writing. It is the drawings that make it possible to understand the method of his work, the process of creating a picture or painting. Klimt paid great attention to the preparatory studies for each figure in his multi-figure pictorial compositions. Sometimes there were whole series devoted to the same motive or pose.

An extensive category of drawings in the exhibition is made up of sketches for female portraits (portraits of Serena Lederer, Paula Zuckerkandl, and others). In these preparatory works, Klimt sought to find such a pose of the model and such a composition of the portrait as a whole that would best express the personality of the person being portrayed through the prism of the artist's perception.

Klimt revolutionized the depiction of the female nude. In a frank interpretation of eroticism, he went much further in his drawings than in painting. Some studies of this kind arose in connection with Klimt's work on pictorial compositions, but most of them are autonomous in nature ("Reclining Nude").

Klimt's graphic style underwent changes throughout his life. Early drawings show a thorough academic training; they differ in almost photographic detail. But they already manifest what will become a constant of Klimt's graphic style - the primacy of the linear principle, the expressiveness of the contour, in which accuracy is combined with sensuality. A separate page in the legacy of Klimt is drawings for the magazine "Ver Sacrum" (1898), built on the contrasts of black and white ("Letter D"); they can be considered reference examples of Art Nouveau style in graphics. Over time, the element of stylization and geometrization of form intensifies in his works.

Starting around 1897, Klimt painted with black chalk on sheets of brown wrapping paper, and later, around 1903-1904, began to use smoother Japanese paper in combination with graphite pencil ("Seated Half-Nude"). Rigid and precise lines of graphite, traces of which have a slight metallic sheen, determine the nature of the drawings, which chronologically correspond to the "golden style" in painting ("Standing Nude, Pregnant"). In subsequent years (approximately after 1908 and especially after 1910), Klimt’s drawings show a turning point towards greater freedom, looseness and “painterly” lines, which at times become intermittent and nervous, conveying the artist’s inner excitement (“Standing with her hands down”).

Klimt's drawing style, based on the expressiveness of the contour line, became a model for Egon Schiele. The experience of decorative stylization of nature, accumulated by the Viennese Art Nouveau, was rethought and applied to solve new problems posed by the aesthetics of expressionism.

Schiele himself considered himself primarily a painter and wanted to be perceived as such. However, in the eyes of many critics and art lovers, Schiele the draftsman often overshadows Schiele the painter. Line and contour play such an essential role in Schiele's painting that drawing can be considered the basis of his paintings. He left about 3,000 works on paper - drawings, watercolors, gouaches.

The earliest drawings by Schiele on display in 1906 (“Self-portrait”, “Bust of Voltaire”) set a starting point for assessing the rapid evolution that his work underwent in subsequent years. A series of sketches for postcards (circa 1909) indicates that by that time the artist had already mastered the style of the Secession and the Vienna Workshops, which was distinguished by its decorative and geometric stylization; during this period he was heavily influenced by Gustav Klimt.

But starting from the second half of 1909, Schiele gradually freed himself from this influence; in 1910 he finally acquires his own original style. Decorativeness and elegance are being replaced by expression and emotional tension (“The Artist Max Oppenheimer”). The expressive contour becomes the main means of expression in Schiele's drawings. The transition from Art Nouveau to Expressionism was marked by the rejection of "beauty" in the interpretation of idealistic aesthetics; it meant erasing the boundaries between the beautiful and the ugly. The limits of art are expanding, it absorbs what was previously considered anti-aesthetic (“Seated Woman”). In his watercolors and gouaches, Schiele uses color to enhance the emotional impact of the work. In some works of 1913 and 1914, the stroke becomes angular and "prickly".

Over the following years (1915–1917) in Schiele's drawings, there was a growing tendency towards realism, towards the transfer of volume and plasticity (“Nude lying on her stomach”). In the drawings of 1918, a continuous contour line is cultivated, outlining the entire figure at once - a clean contour, only sometimes supplemented by sparing shading in places. Schiele achieves unmistakable precision of lines, conciseness and economy of pictorial means (“Reclining Nude with her legs tucked in”).

In the period around 1910–1911, Schiele often and willingly painted children – their depictions are among Schiele's first expressionist works ("Girl in an Ochre-Yellow Dress"). There are many portraits in the heritage of Schiele as a draftsman; very often these are people from his “inner circle”.

A very special phenomenon in the history of art is Schiele's numerous self-portraits. The artist creates different images of himself, tries on “masks”, plays roles, makes faces; in some self-portraits, he depicts himself naked. All these are visual symbols of the fragility of one's "I", which breaks up into incompatible components. Schiele attached great importance to expressive gestures, postures and facial expressions - his own (in self-portraits) and his characters. Schiele's body language is invented and staged by himself; the models' poses are not a natural manifestation of real emotions, but are dictated by the artist ("Nude self-portrait, grimace").

A significant part of Schiele's works on paper are devoted to female models, most often nude. Like Rodin and Klimt, he painted women in his atelier, observing their behavior. For Schiele, there were no prohibitions when depicting women. All taboos have been lifted. Ultimate frankness in the interpretation of erotic motifs was elevated to an aesthetic principle (“Seated Nude”).

The figures in Schiele's drawings are torn out of the social and everyday context, placed in an abstract field of the sheet, where there are no landmarks; his characters exist outside of time and space.

In the legacy of Schiele as a draftsman, a very special place is occupied by thirteen watercolors and drawings made by him during his imprisonment in the spring of 1912, which he experienced as an insulting encroachment on his freedom; of these, two sheets are shown at the exhibition (“Outer door”, “My path runs over the abyss”), which have the character of genuine documentary evidence.

Vitaly Alexandrovich Mishin, curator of the exhibition: “I think for many Russian viewers this exhibition will open up new aesthetic horizons. It will expand the usual ideas about beauty, expressiveness and, perhaps, even about the boundaries of what is permitted in art. In our country, due to various historical circumstances, the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century is much better known than the artistic life of Vienna “circa 1900”. This also applies to drawing, despite the fact that both Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele have long been recognized as one of the most outstanding draftsmen in the history of art. But in order to appreciate the purely graphic charm and powerful energy of these works, you need to see them with your own eyes: reproductions in books and on the Internet do not convey even a small fraction of the artistic qualities inherent in the drawings of these great Austrian masters. The exposition in the halls of the Pushkin Museum, based on the richest collection of Albertina, will provide us with such a rare opportunity, will allow us to better understand the evolution of the work of both masters, the artistic method and the unique aesthetic world of each of them.”

Project Curators: Vitaly Mishin (Leading Research Fellow, Department of 19th-20th Century European and American Art of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) and Christoph Metzger (Albertina Museum, Vienna)

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In the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin opened an exhibition of graphic works of the largest representatives of the Austrian art of the early XX century Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Approximately 100 sheets from the collection of the Albertina Museum (Vienna) will be shown - 47 by Gustav Klimt and 49 by Egon Schiele.
Using traditional graphic techniques - black chalk, graphite pencil, watercolor, gouache - the artists solved new aesthetic problems that faced them at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. "They felt where the world was going, that's what's important," said Irina Antonova, president of the Pushkin Museum, at the opening.

The first exhibition "Masterpieces of Drawing" from the Albertina Museum was held at the Pushkin Museum in 1973 - it featured 3 drawings by Klimt and two by Schiele. Some of them, 44 years later, ended up in Moscow again. "There are values in culture that every generation should join in order to form a complete picture of the world. The exhibition of drawings will expand the usual ideas about beauty, expressiveness and, perhaps, even about the boundaries of what is permitted in art. Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele are recognized as one of the most outstanding draftsmen in the history of art, they must be seen with your own eyes: reproductions in books and on the Internet do not convey even a small fraction of artistic qualities. In general, 50 cm is the distance that allows you to truly get acquainted with a work of art, "explains Vitaly Mishin , exhibition curator.

The exhibition in the Russian capital will last 3 months, and this should be considered as a privilege, because the drawings cannot be exhibited in the light either too often or for too long.
Due to the abundance of nudity in the drawings of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin was forced to introduce age restrictions for visitors - 18+. Marina Loshak, director of the Pushkin Museum: “We are always afraid to infringe on believers, emotional, nervous - but without this it is impossible to show the work of a lonely, suffering, complex person. You can't castrate an artist because you're afraid of upsetting someone. Yes, it’s not worth coming to the exhibition with children, but Pushkinsky’s children, who are brought up in museum circles under the guidance of experienced teachers, understand the context of art and often “read” works better than adults.”

Location: Gallery of European and American Art of the 19th-20th Centuries. Volkhonka, 14
Event dates: October 10, 2017 – January 14, 2018

Gustav Klimt - draftsman

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), the main exponent of Viennese Art Nouveau, had a reputation as a phenomenal draftsman. His drawings influenced the work of younger artists, most notably Egon Schiele (1890–1918), who began his career at a time when Klimt had already reached the pinnacle of his work. Having learned the experience of his predecessor, Schiele very early acquired a unique style that marked the transition from Art Nouveau to Expressionism.

The works of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele appeared in the Albertina during the lifetime of the artists. For a hundred years, the number of Klimt's drawings in the museum's collection has reached 170, and Schiele - 140.
Klimt's drawings were very popular among art connoisseurs and collectors in the years immediately before and after his death. A significant part of Klimt's drawings is associated with one or another pictorial work of the master - he almost never spoke about his creative ideas, either orally or in writing. It is the drawings that make it possible to understand the method of his work, the process of creating a picture or painting.

Klimt revolutionized the depiction of the female nude. In a frank interpretation of erotica in drawings, he went much further than in painting. Some studies of this kind arose in connection with Klimt's work on pictorial compositions, but most of them are autonomous in nature ("Reclining Nude").
A separate page in the legacy of Klimt is drawings for the magazine "Ver Sacrum" (1898), built on the contrasts of black and white ("Letter D"); they can be considered reference examples of Art Nouveau style in graphics.

Egon Schiele - shocking nudes and self-portraits

Schiele considered himself primarily a painter and wanted to be perceived as such. But line and contour play such an essential role in Schiele's painting that drawing can be considered the basis of his paintings. Having died at the age of 28 from Spanish, Schiele left about 3,000 works on paper - drawings, watercolors, gouaches.

The earliest drawings by Schiele on display in 1906 (“Self-Portrait”, “Bust of Voltaire”) set a starting point that allows one to assess the rapid evolution of creativity in subsequent years. A series of sketches for postcards (circa 1909) indicates that by that time the artist had already mastered the style of the Secession and the Vienna Workshops, which was distinguished by its decorative and geometric stylization; during this period he was heavily influenced by Gustav Klimt.

But in 1910, he finally acquires his own original style. Over the following years (1915–1917) in Schiele's drawings, there was a growing tendency towards realism, towards the transfer of volume and plasticity (“Nude lying on her stomach”). In the drawings of 1918, a continuous contour line is cultivated. Schiele achieves unmistakable precision of lines, conciseness and economy of pictorial means (“Reclining Nude with her legs tucked in”).

In the period around 1910–1911, Schiele often and willingly painted children; the heritage of Schiele as a draftsman includes many portraits of people from his “inner circle”. Schiele's self-portraits are also numerous. The artist creates different images, tries on “masks”, plays roles, makes faces; in some self-portraits depicts himself naked. All these are visual symbols of the fragility of the “I”, which breaks down into incompatible components.

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In 1918, as World War I drew to a close, a new threat loomed over Europe - the Spanish flu epidemic. Egon Schiele died from it, and nine months earlier, from pneumonia, his teacher Gustav Klimt.

Two masters worked in the same city and at the same time, but in different directions. One turned to the tenderness and beauty of the female body, the other to the aesthetics of the ugly and the theme of loneliness. But each of them challenged the conservative society and left a mark on the world history of painting.

Together with the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin, who organized an exhibition of 96 works by Klimt and Schiele, TASS talks about the relationship between the two masters, their styles and drawings.

KLIMT: RECOGNITION AND THE WAY TO SECESSION

Klimt was born in 1862 on the outskirts of Vienna, the son of the gold engraver Ernst Klimt. He had two brothers, who later also became artists, and four sisters. From a young age, he found himself in the strict framework of academism: Klimt received his first and only art education at the Vienna Art and Craft School (Kunstgewerbeschule).

His early works had nothing to do with his paintings such as Judith with the Head of Holofernes or The Kiss. Nevertheless, his talent and zeal made him famous already at the age of 26 - in 1888, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary Franz Joseph I presented the artist with the Golden Cross for decorating the court Burgtheater on the Ringstrasse in Vienna.

Six years later, Klimt received an order to write three "faculty paintings" to decorate the main building of the State University of Vienna: "Philosophy", "Medicine" and "Jurisprudence".

These works, which have not survived to this day, marked the transition of Klimt from academicism to modernity. True, they caused a big scandal: the public considered them frankly erotic, if not pornographic, and the university refused to place the pictures within its walls.

While working on them, Klimt founded the "Viennese Secession" - an association of artists of Vienna, which accepted like-minded people who worked both within and outside the traditional directions.

Reclining Nude by Gustav Klimt

"Klimt founds it because he sees the need to create an alternative organization of artists in order to introduce the Viennese public to the achievements of the latest Austrian art," explains Elena Korotkikh, researcher at the Department of European and American Art of the 19th-20th centuries of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin.

SHIELE: YOUTH AND ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE MASTER

Just like Klimt, the young Egon Schiele went to the Kunstgewerbeschule. There he showed his drawings and was sent to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
From childhood, Schiele opposed himself to society, starting with his own class at school.
“Several times he changed schools, turning out to be an outsider. He was successful mainly in physical education and in drawing,” notes Korotkikh.
In 1909, he dropped out without receiving a full academic education.
True, the value of Schiele's unofficial art education is higher than the academic one - Gustav Klimt himself patronized and patronized him.
They met in 1907. Then Schiele was only 17 years old, and Klimt had already gained worldwide fame. In the same year, he began work on the painting "The Kiss". It was the peak of the "golden period".
It was thanks to Klimt that Schiele's paintings appeared in 1908 at an exhibition in Klosterneuburg, and in 1909 at an international art exhibition in Vienna.
Klimt passed on his knowledge to Schiele and guided him. But the young artist had his own, special vision of the world and beauty, his own technique. Yes, his life was very different.

Drawings by Egon Schiele: "Artist Max Oppenheimer" (1910), "Reclining Nude with legs crossed" (1918), "The Model in Red" (1914)

EROTIC AND FREEDOM

From the collection of the Vienna Albertina Museum in the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin brought 47 works by Klimt and 49 by Schiele. To show their relationship, drawings from different periods were interspersed.
The relationship of drawings is a direct consequence of the relationship between teacher and student. According to Elena Korotkikh, Klimt conveyed two main ideas to Schiele.
The first is a more explicit interpretation of erotica.
“Klimt was interested in the study of female sexuality, opened it up and, in a way, was the first to take the hit. Schiele and [Oscar] Kokoschka followed in his footsteps,” says Korotkikh.
At the same time, Klimt's and Schiele's approach to erotica itself was completely different. Klimt treats eroticism with great tenderness.
“He has a very attractive female nature, physical beauty is important to Klimt,” says a researcher at the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin.
Schiele focuses on the aesthetics of the ugly. In this sense, Klimt and Schiele are complete opposites.
The second idea is that the artist is not obliged to explain anything and can do what he wants and how he wants. This approach was very useful for Schiele as an expressionist. And he took full advantage of it.

LONELY AND LEGAL PROBLEMS

In the works of Schiele, unlike Klimt, in addition to opposition, the motive of loneliness is constantly present. Many of the artist's drawings do not have any background, they are cut off from the environment.
The artist demonstrates a separation from gravity, from reality. The motive of the lost child, which was present from the very beginning, the motive of isolation, is of paramount importance for him. The viewer does not know what is happening around the object chosen by the artist.
In 1912, Schiele served just over three weeks in prison. The court found the artist guilty that his drawings of pornographic content were available to a 12-year-old girl who appeared on the threshold of his house and asked for help.
Schiele and his constant companion Wally Neuzil (the former model of Gustav Klimt) left her for the night, then took the girl with them to Vienna (she said that her grandmother lived in the capital). Meanwhile, the girl's father went to the police. When law enforcement officers came to the artist's house, dozens of erotic drawings were found in his possession.
Schiele was imprisoned for distributing pornography and seducing minors. But, fortunately, the charges of seduction and kidnapping were rejected at the trial.
“Perhaps, then Schiele realized that he could face serious consequences. He was used to resisting everyone artistically, but did not expect such a turn of affairs,” says Elena Korotkikh.

Drawings by Egon Schiele

DRAWINGS BUT NOT PAINTING

Among the works presented at the exhibition in Moscow, almost all 96 are drawings. Despite the fact that Gustav Klimt is now better known to the world as a painter, his talent as a draftsman is just as huge. According to the writer Mariana Bisanz-Prakken, during Klimt's lifetime, his works on paper were exhibited "often only as a decorative addition to his painting", and are now valued much higher.
As for Schiele, the artist himself presented his drawings as independent works of art.
Klaus Albrecht Schroeder, director of the Albertina Museum in Vienna, notes that works on paper were less accessible to a wide audience, which guaranteed the artists the freedom to choose subjects and their interpretation.
The drawings of Klimt and - especially - Schiele not without reason caused criticism and misunderstanding of the public at the beginning of the 20th century. Recommended age to visit the exhibition at the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin - 18+ or at the discretion of the parents.
Drawings by Klimt and Schiele have never been exhibited in Russia in such a volume before. According to Vitaly Mishin, curator of the exhibition, "reproductions in books and on the Internet do not convey even a small fraction of the artistic qualities inherent in the drawings of these great Austrian masters."

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Reproductions of paintings provided by the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin.
Photographs used in the material: The Albertina Museum, Vienna, TASS Newsreel (Roman Kanashchuk, Sergey Bobylev), Alexander Avilov/AGN "Moskva", adoc-photos/Corbis via Getty Images.

The next day after the opening of the exhibition at the Gallery of European and American Art of the XIX-XX centuries, commentators asked: “Where are the genitals?” - they say, Schiele has much more frank pictures that could be shown under the heading "18+". However, this figure is not a limitation, but a recommendation. Moving more than a hundred works of artists from the Vienna Albertina to Moscow, Pushkinsky's leadership, of course, did not forget about the impressionability of some activists. Ninety-nine years after the death of both artists, museum workers still have concerns that their work may be taken with hostility. “What can we say about what society was like at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries,” says Vitaly Mishin, curator of the exhibition, “looking at the works of Viennese modernists, which today are perceived as a historical given, we can hardly imagine with what eyes contemporaries looked at them artists."

There is no “kiss” in Pushkin: Klimt’s works are mainly graphic sketches on paper, in which one can only guess the future golden whirlwinds around Adele Bloch-Bauer’s dress, but the plasticity of these figures, barely outlined in pencil, makes it clear how the artist developed a new canon, announcing modernism . He worked as a craftsman: he painted a lot every day, the heritage includes two and a half thousand sheets, not counting the works donated and torn by his own hand. Klimt sometimes did not take into account the opinion of customers. Sketches of "Faculty Works" are all that remains of four scandalous paintings that burned down during World War II. They were supposed to decorate the ceiling of the University of Vienna, but the professors refused to accept them: instead of life-affirming allegories that were supposed to inspire awe in the students in the temple of knowledge, there are conflicting plots and overly naturalistic images of people. It would seem that there is nothing special about the nude female figure in the painting “Medicine”: around the same years, Jean-August-Dominique Ingres painted full-length nudes for the bourgeois. According to Mishin, the angle - the view from below - was considered outrageous. By the way, Klimt used this angle so that the figure did not stand firmly on the ground, but “floated” above it.

“Seated half-naked”, which is destined to turn into a predatory “Salome”, was created under the influence of Freud’s ideas: for Klimt, sex, blood and death were inseparable. Next to his light and seemingly sleepy figures are Schiele's sitters, physiological, broken, painted in bold lines. The young artist "grew up" on Klimt, but pretty soon outgrew him. “He abandoned aestheticization in favor of naturalism and expressiveness,” Mishin leads the guests to the “Portrait of a Red-haired Girl” with yellow animal eyes and spread fingers resembling claws.

“It destroys the ideal of beauty, and what was considered anti-aesthetic enters the realm of art and is recognized as an aesthetic principle,” comments Schiele, curator of the work. “In his children’s portraits, children appear sophisticated beyond their age, there is some kind of trouble in them.” Schiele looked at people with unceremonious curiosity, making some teenager out of punks his sitter. But the artist’s view of himself was radically different: Schiele depicted himself even more broken, as if cramped - and naked. He seemed to be trying on different roles, depicting his own grimaces and poor coordination.

He paid the price for inviting teenagers to the workshop. He was accused of corrupting morals - teenagers could see sketches of erotic content laid out everywhere - and sent to prison for three weeks. “Schile believed that he, as an artist, was allowed more than an average person, he neglected conventions and was terribly disappointed in the society that showed him his place like this. He experienced it as a monstrous injustice,” says Mishin. His faithful girlfriend handed over drawing supplies and oranges to the camera. According to the artist's patron and publisher of his first biography, Arthur Rössler, these oranges were, one might say, the only source of light in the chamber. Looking at them, Schiele dreamed of leaving for the shores of the Adriatic. Much later than the sad episode, he painted expressive gouache - a still life of three oranges on a dirty brown background was called "My path lies over the abyss." Next to this gouache hangs an image of a rather loosely painted ship in a greenish spot of water - the plot of a wish come true.

Exhibition “Gustav Klimt. Egon Schiele. Drawings from the Albertina Museum” will run until 14 January.

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