Vienna is a music and art mecca. August is down time for music, but it’s a great time to see art and architecture. Here is the Museum Quarter, an open air plaza ringed by museums.

Above and below, the Leopold Museum.

I had read that the Museum featured the work of Egon Schiele and to a lesser extent, other painters of the period, including Gustav Klimt. I’ve always liked Klimt (he’s easy to like) and been put off by Schiele, who I’ve associated with emaciated, graphic nudes. I’m still not a fan of the nudes. But this exhibit totally changed my perception of Schiele.

To begin with, his entire body of work was completed by the time he died at the age of 28 of the Spanish Flu. He painted the self portrait above when he was 22.

When he was 17 he sent Klimt, who was already famous, some examples of his work. Klimt helped Schiele make contacts that got him started in the art world and was a steadfast proponent of his work.

Schiele’s work is not always pretty, but it is moving. Here is Klimt’s representation of death: (“Death and Life”)

Here is Schiele’s (“The Self Seers II, Death and Man”)

Below, another painting of this theme, “Levitation”. Note that Schiele modeled all of the figures in these paintings after himself. They feel so personal – not paintings of Death as much as paintings about mortality.

I was also very moved by Schiele’s landscapes, of which I knew nothing before seeing them here. Here is one of a series of paintings of what was then Krumau, Czechoslovakia, and is now Cesky  Krumov (“House on a River”). The “deadness” of the city (his mother’s birthplace, but that’s a whole other story) is relieved only by the laundry – evidence that someone lives here.

Lastly, this is “Sundown” (1912)

This quote is alongside the painting.

And that was it.