EGON SCHIELE | Stehender Akt (Standing Female Nude)

Sale: Christie's, New York, November 15, 1990, lot 129
Galerie Neher, Essen (acquired at the above sale)
Galerie St. Etienne, New York
Acquired from the above

Essen, Galerie Neher, Klassiche Moderne: Gemälde, Aquarelle, Sklpturen, 1991, n.n., illustrated in the catalogue
Düsseldorf, Westdeutsche Kunstmesse & Krefeld, Galerie Schönewald und Beuse, Vom Espressionismus bis zur Gegenwart: Eine Auswahl, 1996, n.n., illustrated on the invitation

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 1238a, illustrated p. 670

This work is in very good condition. Executed on cream wove paper. The sheet is t-hinged to a mount at two places along the upper edge of its verso. The left edge is deckled. There is an artist's pinhole in the lower right corner. There are minor, scattered spots of foxing throughout. There is some very minor, uneven time-staining throughout. There is a 1 inch long repaired tear to the lower right edge.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Executed in 1913, the present work is a striking example of Egon Schiele's nudes, which characterize the early Expressionist period of his career and display his bold experimentation and innovation. Schiele explored the human figure in depth, creating highly charged compositions by depicting his subjects in variously contorted postures and exaggerating their physical features. Stehender Akt (Standing Female Nude) demonstrates the artist's skill as a draftsman and his obsession with the sensuous quality of the human form. Delineated in sharp contours of black pencil, the figure appears caught off guard by the viewer's gaze, her left arm shielding her breasts in a protective posture and her lack of facial features projecting a sense of anonymity. 

Egon Schiele is often considered the Wunderkind of the early twentieth-century avant-garde for his candid pictorial explorations of the human body. The greater part of his remarkable oeuvre, mostly works on paper, was completed within the span of a decade before he died of the Spanish flu at the age of twenty eight. As a young art student working in Vienna in the first decade of the 1900s, he became a close acquaintance of Gustav Klimt, the celebrated painter of the Viennese Belle Époque. Klimt instantly recognized the younger artist's exceptional talent as a draftsman, and supposedly even regarded Schiele's skill as being far superior to his own. According to one account, Schiele had once shown some drawings to Klimt and asked for his criticism, to which Klimt allegedly responded, "But you already know more than I do" (quoted in Serge Sabarsky, Egon Schiele, 1890-1918, A Centennial Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, 1990, p. 13).