Egon Schiele

Michael Kastner, London (sale: Sotheby's, London, 3^rd December 1986, lot 443)
Stanley J. Seeger (purchased at the above sale. Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Works from the Collection of Stanley J. Seeger, 8^th May 2001, lot 11)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 651, illustrated p. 421

Männlicher Akt belongs to a group of highly expressive male nudes that Schiele executed in 1910 (fig. 1). Depicting a man's back placed at a three-quarter pose to the viewer, the artist explores the male torso in a contorted movement, and creates a highly charged composition by exaggerating the man's features. The contours of the body are outlined in charcoal to reveal the strong, sharp skeleton, while the flesh is highlighted with soft washes of yellow, green and red watercolour. Like many of Schiele's nude self-portraits, the body is elongated and emaciated, revealing strong shoulder blades, the rib cage and the vertebrae of the spinal column protruding from beneath the figure's taut skin. The head is almost completely disappearing in a forward movement, suggested only by a hint of black hair. The composition as a whole is a study of the body as an intricate compilation of contours and colours, truncated and abstracted almost beyond recognition to create an effect reminiscent of Schiele's anthropomorphic landscapes (fig. 2).

With regard to Schiele's drawing of the human figure, Kirk Varnedoe wrote: 'After a few tentative and stylish early efforts at self-definition Schiele began in 1910 to produce the series of painted and drawn self-portraits that are among the most extraordinary works of early modern Viennese art. Again and again, he depicted himself as a scrawny and scrofulous nude, in hues of red, fiery orange, ochre, and occasionally bruised purple-blue, tangled and foreshortened into a contortionist's repertoire of strenuous poses' (K. Varnedoe, in Vienna 1900: Art, Architecture & Design (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986, pp. 174-176). Although the man's face is hidden away from the viewer, as with most of Schiele's renderings of the male body, this torso is based on his observation of his own figure. As Schiele turned away from a literal representation of the body, it is not so much the man's physique that is reminiscent of the artist, but primarily the mood and the sense of anxiety expressed by its contortion that are highly reflective of the artist's mental and emotional state.

Rudolf Leopold's observation of a closely related work (fig. 1) can be applied to the present watercolour: 'The tonality of the body and arms is particularly impressive: in spite of arbitrariness and exaggeration, yellow-green and oranges successfully combined with red. One would be justified in making a comparison with French Fauvism' (R. Leopold, Egon Schiele, Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings, New York, 1972, p. 106). Although Schiele was not acquainted with Fauvism at this time, according to Leopold, his use of colour in the body is intended to convey an emotional state of the mind. Thomas M. Messer believed that Schiele 'observed every feature [of the body], probing beyond the exterior toward the hidden layers of the psychic reality' (T. M. Messer, Egon Schiele, New York, 1965, p. 7).