The self-portraits of his large series of watercolours and paintings made between 1910 and 1918 - of which this is a good example - are scorching, psychologically complex images. The emaciated, tormented figure of the artist, bony and angular, bristles with an inner tension made visible by the agitated pencil line and painted white surrounding aura. Shy tail wild, his big, dark eyes threatening, his mouth open and his bristles steeply upright. In a pose reminiscent of the crucified Christ, his arm is clumsily outstretched and bent sharply towards the elbow. The colour is limited to shades of brown, with only certain parts of the body (mouth, nipples, navel and genitals) coloured red.
Egon Schiele (Tulln, 12 June 1890 - Vienna, 31 October 1918) was an Austrian expressionist painter.
