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13

PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION EGON SCHIELE (1890-1918) Zwei Frauenakte, liegend un...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:350,000.00 - 450,000.00 USD
PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION EGON SCHIELE (1890-1918) Zwei Frauenakte, liegend un...
PROPERTY FROM AN AMERICAN
PRIVATE COLLECTION
EGON SCHIELE
(1890-1918)
Zwei Frauenakte, liegend
und kniend (Die Freundinnen)
(two female nudes, one reclining, one kneeling
(the friends))
signed and dated "Egon Schiele 1912" (center right); numbered "A55" (on the reverse)
watercolor and pencil on paper
13 3/4 x 18 1/8 in. (35 x 46 cm)
executed in 1912
Estimate: $350,000-450,000 <p>Provenance
Galerie Würthle, Vienna
Robert Temple (acquired from the above, ca. 1924-1925)
Anon. sale: Wolfgang Ketterer, Munich, May 20-21, 1969, lot 1265
Serge Sabarsky, New York
Anon. sale: Dom-Galerie, Vienna, March 19, 1973, lot 543 <p>Literature
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, The Complete Works, New York, 1990, p. 476, no. 1115
There is a sketch entitled, Stehender Frauenakt mit kind auf dem arm on the reverse.
This dynamic work displays the linear virtuosity of many of Schiele's finest drawings and gouaches of 1912. They relate to a group of double-nude compositions executed during the same period (Kallir nos. 1111-1116), in which he explores different poses and figural relationships. The presence here of one figure bending over a reclining nude anticipates some of the larger oil paintings such as Man and Woman I, 1914 (Kallir no. 275), and Man and Woman II, 1918 (Kallir no. 329), as well as several works on paper that describe similar poses. Although these oils symbolize archetypal heterosexual relationships while the present sheet portrays two women, what is crucial to Schiele is the concept of pairing, rather than any particular sexual orientation. Indeed pairs, mirror images, and even döppelgangers are evident in many of his works, for example the double self-portraits. Schiele was defiant in his desire to produce provocative art: "I am glad there are so few who can recognize art...That is constant proof of its divine nature" (Schiele, quoted in Jane Kallir, op. cit., p. 117). But his aim was never merely to shock. Couplings, whether heterosexual or otherwise, were, to Schiele, symbolic of the very origin of human life, and sex was a primal creative act, like art. His innate feeling for human eroticism is perfectly reflected in his style, especially during this period, as Kallir writes: "Schiele's drawing style throughout this period is free and loose; graceful, arching curves flirt with outlandish exaggeration but are held in check by their inherent grace. Unusual compositional angles - foreshortened views from above and vertical presentations of recumbant figures - bespeak an intentionally daring, venturesome approach" (ibid., p. 461).
Though signed in a portrait format, this work was conceived as a horizontal composition. According to Rudolf Leopold, Schiele often signed horizontal works in portrait format, since the latter was preferred by the Wiener Secession.



<hr>
<b>EROTICISM</b>

<b>HUMANITY & MODERNITY</b>

<b>A PRIVATE COLLECTION OF WORKS ON PAPER </b>


BY GUSTAV KLIMT & EGON SCHIELE


Lots 1-14
<p>Klimt’s drawings often tell us more about his instinctive impulses as an artist than any other aspect of his output. It is in his pencil sketches, that the sublime lyricism of his vision of humanity can be most directly experienced. As Gottried Fliedl has noted: “Even during his lifetime Klimt’s drawings were regarded by many critics as the best things in his entire oeuvre – a view which is still shared by several art historians today” (G. Fliedl, Gustav Klimt, The World in Female Form, Cologne, 1989, p. 189).

<p>Relatively few of the artist’s drawings were exhibited during Klimt’s lifetime. Some were published in erotic journals and in Ver Sacrum. As soon as the artist died, however, there was a rush of interest. The dealer Gustav Nebeday did much to present them to the public, recognizing that even the most unfinished and simple of them were often masterpieces of the cogent art of line drawing, works which both described human form and appeared to sing with eroticism and elegance. The drawings of Beardsley as well as the sinuous lines common to Art Nouveau aesthetics were elements in the formation of Klimt’s mature vision as a draftsman. Early on in his career he could draw with the academic rigor of the most successful salon artists of the day such as Hans Makart. However, in the process of spending thousands of hours observing the model, he freed his art from any academic constraints. His erotic imagery represented liberation from the mores of late 19th century society toward the modern age, and simultaneously the freedom of his line redefined the very possibilities of drawing. His last great painting on the complex theme of female sexuality, Die Braut (The Bride), was left unfinished upon his death in 1918. Two of the most alluring drawings in the present collection are important studies for this late canvas, lots 1 and 5.

<p>Drawing is a material form of thinking, the bridge between concept and reality. There is no falsification, no hiding behind the inherent impressiveness of the medium, as there can be in oil. Both Klimt and Schiele reveal their true greatness in their drawings. In them they show the viewer that even with the most basic reflexes they were able to express the essence of their vision and unique style.

<p>The drawings differ from the paintings for which they served as preparatory studies in other important ways. Usually having no extraneous background details, all symbolist or narrative connotations found in the oils are removed. This was one aspect of Klimt’s draftsmanship that appealed strongly to his younger contemporary, the diabolically gifted Egon Schiele, who, until 1910, often produced work in Klimt’s manner. As Gottried Fliedl observed: “The drawings contain virtually no indication of an overall spatial context or higher meaning. They no longer have a literary or mythological significance, which the depiction of the erotic needed in 19th century art in order to be justified, and which is also present in Klimt’s allegorical Symbolist paintings. The omission of any narrative or historical elements also means that the drawings have no temporal dimension” (ibid., pp. 192-193).

<p>This is especially important when viewing the group of drawings by Klimt offered here. Several of them are studies for some of the artist’s most celebrated oil paintings, and they thus allow us the opportunity of reading the images of these famous canvases in a different way, divorced of any literal context. The present works span much of his career, starting with studies originally from the Lederer Collection on the theme of Thalia and Melpomene, produced at the end of 1898, lots 3 and 7. These trace Klimt’s development during the period when he was first entering artistic maturity. It was during this time, partly influenced by Whistler and Lautrec, that he embarked upon the works for which he is now chiefly remembered. A dramatic and devastating drawing of a standing man, lot 6, also formerly from the Lederer Collection, bears the influence of Rodin and is a preparatory sketch for the most memorable figure in the University panel Philosophy of 1899-1907. With the Faculty Paintings Klimt established the themes that would make his work deeply relevant to the struggles of 20th century humanity, breaking with his 19th century training. Although the controversy provoked by his panels caused him enduring problems in Viennese cultural society, they established him as a virtual guru of the next generation of artists, of whom Schiele was the most significant. Gilles Néret considered this break with the past as a vital moment in the history of the art of the century. “The venerable Viennese professors protested at what they saw as an attack on orthodoxy. They had proposed a painting which would express the triumph of light over darkness. Instead the artist had presented them with a portrayal of the ‘victory of darkness over all.’ Influenced by the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzche, trying in his own way to solve the metaphysical riddle of human existence, to give expression to modern man’s confusion, Klimt inverted the proposition. …Life and the erotic expression of life are always concentrated on the struggle between Eros and Thanatos, and this is all-pervading in Klimt” (Gilles Néret, Gustav Klimt, 1862-1918, Cologne, 1993, pp. 24-25).
Many of the drawings offered here express beautifully the depth and pathos of Klimt’s eroticism, for example Kauernder Halbakt Nack Links, circa 1913-1914, lot 9, which is a study for Leda (1917) and Liegender Akt Nach Rechts, 1914-1915, lot 4. There is also a particularly intense drawing, lot 2, which relates closely to the celebrated Adam and Eve (1917-1918), a painting in which Klimt explores the origins of life through a depiction of the archetypal lovers.

<p>Egon Schiele’s Neugeborener, 1910, lot 12, originally from the Erich Lederer Collection, is the earliest of four works by the artist in this collection. The power and expressive radicalism of this watercolor typifies the new ways in which Schiele, learning from, but going further towards stark reality than Klimt, was willing to represent the cycle of human life as directly and non-romantically as possible. Although it is uncertain how aware the artist was of Freud’s ideas on the subject of infancy, it is clear that Schiele and Freud came from the same cultural milieu. The two superb watercolors, Akt, 1913, lot 11, and Zwei Frauenakte, liegend und kniend (Die Freundinnen), 1912, lot 13, display Schiele’s remarkable genius as a draftsman, particularly when it came to translating especially challenging poses. The second of these also exemplifies Schiele’s liberated attitude towards sexuality, something that caused him problems with the authorities (it was in the year of its execution that he was imprisoned on charges of indecency). Some of his greatest achievements were his double nudes. By presenting two figures connected, he creates a riveting sense of psychological tension. It has often been observed that Schiele’s oeuvre contains a great number of pairings, double self-portraits, the male pairings in the “Self-Seers” paintings, mother and child groupings, as well as other couplings. Kallir has noted that “dualism …was, in fact, intrinsic to his character” (Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, The Complete Works, New York, 1990, p. 92).

<p>The economy and precision with which he adds touches of watercolor and gouache to heighten the expressive scope and spatial relationships of the figures in such works remains unrivalled in the history of modern art. Kallir observed: “Schiele’s dualistic personality made him the ideal candidate to attempt a reconciliation of Austria’s conflicting aesthetic impulses. Even his stylistic technique – with its precarious combination of naturalistic rendering and expressive stylization, artifice and emotion – was double-edged” (ibid.). This made him the perfect heir to Klimt and also gave him the rarest gift in any artist, the ability “to find the exalted in the everyday,” as had Van Gogh a quarter of a century before him. The collection concludes with one of Schiele’s rare portraits of a Russian prisoner of war from Camp Gänserndorf. Executed towards the start of World War I, lot 14 has all the intensity and humanity of Van Gogh’s Arles Period portraits, while pointing ahead to a different world. Schiele writes: “We have grown hard and fearless. What existed before 1914 belongs to another world – we will thus always look to the future” (from a letter to his sister Gertrude, dated November, 1914).

<p>Several of the works offered here originate from the collection of Erich Lederer, who sat for Schiele on many occasions, starting when Erich was in his teens. The importance of the Lederer family as patrons of both Klimt and Schiele cannot be underestimated. Gilles Néret considered that “there can be no art without patronage, and the patrons of the Secession are to be found first and foremost among the Jewish families of the Viennese bourgeoisie. Karl Wittgenstein, the steel magnate, Fritz Wärndorfer, the textile magnate, the Knips family, and the Lederers promoted a specially avant-garde art” (Gilles Néret, op. cit., p. 18). Several of these works are inscribed on the reverse with Lederer Collection reference numbers.
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