Egon Schiele

Between the turn of the twentieth century and the outbreak of World War I, Vienna was a city of remarkable cultural transformation. Inhabited by many of the most progressive intellectual figures of the modern era, the Austrian capital was home to the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte and the Secessionist style exemplified by Gustav Klimt; the site of Sigmund Freud's infamous couch and the backdrop for the development of his psychoanalytic theories; the birthplace of a revolution in music composition heard in the works of Arnold Schoenberg and Anton von Webern; and the setting for Adolf Loos's and Josef Hoffmann's bold experiments in new architecture and design. Vienna was also the residence of the painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918), whose tragically short life and obsession with self-portraiture and erotic depictions of the female body are legendary.
Schiele is seen here in a rare portrait by Trcka, a Viennese painter and photographer of Czech extraction who signed his works "Antios." Trcka remains a mysterious figure, as virtually all of his life's work was destroyed after an Allied bomb damaged his art-filled studio in 1944, four years after his death. The artist experimented with new photographic techniques, including the bromoil process, and frequently applied titles to the manipulated surfaces of his portraits. This photograph is a copy made by Trcka of his original hand-titled bromoil print.