Schiele, Egon

Handzeichnungen. Vienna, Prague, Leipzig: [Gesellschaft für graphische Industrie, Vienna for] Strache, 1920



Folio (23 x 16 1/2 in.; 584 x 420 mm). Title leaf, content leaf with colophon on verso, 15 collotype plates, of which 4 are in color, tipped onto charcoal-gray paper; dampstain and a few small tears on text leaves. Loose as issued in a brown board portfolio with artist's name stamped in silver on upper cover; backstrip torn, various scuffs and scrapes.

Number 370 of 510 copies.

The Handzeichnungen was published two years after the artist's death. "The inclusion of multicolor collotypes increased difficulty of production, but indicated a desire to fully capture the beauty of Schiele's watercolor and gouache paintings. Monochrome prints of nude models express a greater concern for compositional experimentation than for erotic titillation. Yet the portfolio exhibits the internal contradictions of Schiele's personality, most evidently through portraits of his wife Edith and her sister Adele." (Claire Cass, Rediscovering Portfolio Prints by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Jason Jacques Gallery, New York, 31 March–31 May 2006, p. 58).