23 September 2011 – 30 January 2012

The major exhibition Egon Schiele: Melancholy and Provocation is to open on 23 September 2011. The purpose of this showing is to introduce to the public a pioneering re-presentation of the Leopold Collection’s masterpieces by Egon Schiele.
Egon Schiele was an artist of extremes, and the masterpieces by this ingenious painter and draughtsman remain just as provocative today as they were during the artist’s lifetime. Though Schiele died in 1918 at the young age of 28, his art is already possessed of a remarkable maturity and quiet wisdom. It is with an unbelievable degree of empathy that the sensitive artist portrays the deepest of human feelings – love, fear and melancholy. A deeply sad and wistful aura emanates from many of his paintings. But the expressive means used are modern, aggressive, provocative and unsparing.
The title Melancholy and Provocation places the oeuvre of Egon Schiele in the context of a topic that could not be more current: provocation as a way out, or escape, from the depressive mood of prevailing reality. The latter might perhaps correspond with what the current discourse refers to as “the quality of un-being” (Byung-Chul Han). The Leopold Museum will shed light on the historical context of works from the final years of he artist’s life, a seemingly unified but in truth quite fractured reality: the final years of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Within this temporal context, Schiele was something of an “accident in paradise” (in the words of artist Ona B.) alongside the composer Arnold Schönberg and the visual artists Richard Gerstl and Oskar Kokoschka. On the other hand, we will also update this artistic provocation by inviting living artists to present “their” Schiele, i.e. that still-lively provocation that simultaneously embodies melancholy.
Source: Press release