Egon Schiele: the radical nude

Interesting exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery looking at drawings of nudes by Egon Schiele.

I was lucky enough to join a tour of the show by the curator Barnaby Wright which had been organised by the Friends of the Courtauld. It was fascinating to hear that there had not been a Schiele exhibition in the UK for 25 years and that there are no works by him in UK collections.

The curator talked us through Schiele short life history pointing out which pictures sat in which period and how they changed over time. I love the fact her referred to one part of the room with particularly explicit pictures as the naughty corner!

The works were fascinating. The early works were black and white but in the later ones he experimented with adding colour and there was a particular striking picture of a woman in a green top. I found there was a meat like quality to some of the pictures which did lead one person on the tour if there was any evidence of Freud being influenced by the work but the curator did say that Freud never admitted it. I also felt there was a feeling of Toulouse Lautrec but that might just be the black stockings.

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