Egon Schiele – Vienna – Belweder
Klimt actively supported younger artists, np. Egona Schiele (1890-1918), to whom two more rooms are dedicated. He introduced them to his patrons, he exhibited their works at the exhibitions he organized, and even, as was the case with Schiele, gave them his young models, which services he no longer used. This is what happened to 17-year-old Wally Neuzil, with whom Schiele had an affair for several years. W 1915 r. he parted with her and painted Death and the Maiden, disturbing with indifference, farewell portrait of Wally. The girl clings to Schiele, depicted in a state of corpse decomposition. One of Schiele's most famous erotic oil paintings was exhibited in the same room, portrait of two naked people, the artist and his models.
W 1915 Schiele married Edyta Harms, coming from a respected middle-class family. The painting of the artist's wife hanging in the next room was purchased for this gallery, although at the director's request, Schiele had to make some changes. It was about that, to repaint Edyta's plaid skirt, which was considered too "proletarian."”. Spring 1918 r. Edyta was pregnant, which inspired the painter to create a painting dedicated to the family, the last great work, which he did not manage to finish. He died during a flu epidemic, who had killed his wife three days earlier (Klimt died of the flu 8 months earlier). In the painting, Schiele is depicted as the father, the child is his nephew, Toni. Edyta had reservations about posing naked, so probably she wasn't the model for her mother's character. Work, though melancholic, it is downright optimistic compared to a tired picture, on which the artist painted a mother-skeleton and two children resembling mannequins (in the next room).
The remaining works in the second room are portraits commissioned by Herbert Rainer, Hugo Koller and Eduard Kosmak. The latter was an amateur hypnotist, he should not be surprised, therefore, by his somewhat strenuous gaze. Next to Schiele's canvases hangs the insane self-portrait of Richard Gerstel's Laughing with 1908 r. The picture is deeply disturbing, especially if it is weighed, that Gerstl was deeply depressed at the time of its creation, for his lover had abandoned him, Matilda, who returned to her husband – composer Arnold Schonberg. In the same year, Gerstl committed suicide. He only had 28 lat.