Self-Portrait

1909

The 1909 Kunstschau: beside Klimt and Van Gogh

In 1909 Klimt invited Schiele to exhibit some of his work at the Vienna Kunstschau, where he encountered the work of Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, Vincent van Gogh and others.

1909

Leaves the Academy and founds the Neukunstgruppe

In 1909, after completing his third year, Schiele left the Academy and, with other dissatisfied students, founded the Neukunstgruppe (“New Art Group”). Imitations of Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka are visible in his first works, but he soon evolved his own distinctive style.

1910

Experiments with the nude and the birth of a style

In 1910 Schiele began experimenting with nudes, and within a year a definitive style emerged: emaciated, sickly-coloured figures, often with strong sexual overtones. He also began painting and drawing children.

1911

Meets Wally Neuzil

In 1911, at the age of twenty-one, Schiele met the seventeen-year-old Wally Neuzil, who lived with him in Vienna and served as a model for some of his most striking paintings; she had previously modelled for Klimt.

1911

Escape from Viennese bohemia to Krumau

Wanting to escape what they perceived as the claustrophobic Viennese milieu, Schiele and Wally went to Krumau in southern Bohemia, the birthplace of his mother; but the residents, strongly disapproving of their bohemian lifestyle, including his alleged employment of the town’s teenage girls as models, drove the couple out of the town.

1912

Arrest, jail and trial in Neulengbach

In April 1912 Schiele was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and seducing a girl of thirteen: the police seized more than a hundred drawings from his studio that they considered pornographic, and while awaiting trial in custody he made a series of paintings of his jail cell. The charges were dropped, but he was found guilty of exhibiting erotic drawings in a place accessible to children: the judge burned one of the drawings over a candle flame, the 21 days already spent in custody were counted and a further three days’ imprisonment were added.