Coming of Age: Egon Schiele and the Modernist Culture of Youth

Egon Schiele... Two Seated Nude Boys (1910, Watercolor and charcoal on paper, Initialed lower right, and with B. Moser collector's stamp, lower left). From the exhibit Coming of Age: Egon Schiele and the Modernist Culture of Youth at Galerie St. Etienne in New York, NY. "...Like all great artists, Egon Schiele (1890-1918) transcended the specific circumstances of his personal and historical background, while nevertheless being indelibly marked by them. Reaching creative maturity shortly before his twentieth birthday, he is surely one of the youngest modernist superstars. However, Schiele was not entirely alone: the fin-de-siècle culture that spawned him and his Expressionist comrades was uniquely oriented to youth. It was within an overall culture of youth that Schiele, the quintessential artist of adolescence, flourished. This fall, as two major Schiele retrospectives, one at the Neue Galerie in New York (October 21-February 20) and a second at the Albertina Museum in Vienna (December 7-March 19) celebrate the artist's imprint on our present-day mindset, the Galerie St. Etienne reexamines Schiele within the context of his own milieu."