Egon Schiele’s Hidden Obsessions Laid Bare
The Austrian Expressionist’s portraits and erotically charged nudes have masked another side of his career: his eccentric landscapes.
20 世紀的兩次世界大戰，讓英國、歐洲的精英損失慘重。戰死的詩人、藝人等的作品多有專集。
Self Portrait with Raised Bared Shoulder (1912) by Egon Schiele. Photograph: Schiele/Leopold Museum Private Foundation, Vienna
Self-portrait by Isaac Rosenberg, 1915. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London
Visions of the future … The New City (La Citta Nuova) (1914) drawing by Antonio Sant'Elia. Photograph: Dea Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images
Uncountable talents … the first world war memorial to fallen students of the Royal Academy
Top 10 artistic talents lost in the first world war
The first world war coincided with one of the most creative periods in the history of art, and among the other tragic losses, we should count the future masterpieces we never got to see
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Streaks of fiery colour … Der Mandrill (1913) by Franz Marc. Click to see full image. Photograph: Alamy
Franz Marc
This brilliant expressionist painter captured the excitement of the young 20th century in shards and streaks of fiery colour as he reimagined nature through visionary eyes. But he was killed on the western front aged 36, and modern art lost a giant in the making.
German, died 1916
German, died 1916
Umberto Boccioni
The most gifted artist in the futurist movement, Umberto Boccioni created intensely dynamic images – such as his striding figure Unique Continuities in Space – that are powerful similes for the technological breakthroughs of the new century. Futurism celebrated war as a cleansing, energising force. When war came, Boccioni joined up, was wounded in 1915, and died in a riding accident while convalescing.
Italian, died 1916
Italian, died 1916
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
This gifted French artist lived and worked in Britain, where he shared the radical modernism of his friends Ezra Pound and Jacob Epstein. He took the surname of his Polish girlfriend, the writer Sophie Brzeska. When war was declared he joined the French army and was killed in battle at the age of 23, leaving a small but formidable body of work.
French, died 1915
French, died 1915
Egon Schiele
Self Portrait with Raised Bared Shoulder (1912) by Egon Schiele. Photograph: Schiele/Leopold Museum Private Foundation, Vienna
The horrific mortality rate of the first world war was worsened by the flu pandemic that struck a weakened European population as the war ended. The 28-year-old genius Egon Schiele was one of its victims, along with his wife Edith. It was the end of one of the most provocative and passionate lives in modern art. Schiele's desperate self-portraits and erotic drawings pursue a profound subjective openness to life's joy and pain. What more might he have done?
Austrian, died 1918
Austrian, died 1918
Isaac Rosenberg
Self-portrait by Isaac Rosenberg, 1915. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London
The painter and poet Isaac Rosenberg was the son of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe and grew up on Cable Street in London's East End. He struggled with poverty throughout his short life. He was opposed to the war and wrote against it, and joined up in 1915 not out of patriotism but because he needed the money. He was killed in the last few months of the war, aged 27. He is remembered for his war poetry more than his art, but his sensitive self-portrait in the National Portrait Gallery is a moving relic of doomed youth.
British, died 1918
British, died 1918
Antonio Sant'Elia
Visions of the future … The New City (La Citta Nuova) (1914) drawing by Antonio Sant'Elia. Photograph: Dea Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images
The architecture of the 21st century is full of echoes of the fantastic drawings of Antonio Sant'Elia, the favourite architect of the futurist movement. In an Italy still dominated by Roman ruins and Renaissance palaces, Sant'Elia imagined science-fiction cities of immense skyscrapers, glass and concrete fortresses, raked futurist ziggurats. His visions were to remain mere beautiful speculative designs after he was killed in the Battle of Monfalcone at the age of 28.
Italian, died 1916
Italian, died 1916
August Macke
German expressionism is sometimes accused (for instance by the music critic Alex Ross in his book The Rest is Noise) of sharing some supposed German spirit of over-intense belligerence. But in painting, the German expressionists before the first world war shared the same interests as the French fauves – sex, travel and vibrant colour. Macke's art is sensual and hedonist and not a bit brooding. But his artistic joy in life did not save him from being killed in the early weeks of the war. He was 27.
German, died 1914
German, died 1914
Raymond Duchamp-Villon
Trench warfare was lethal not just because of shells and machine gun fire but because of deeply unhealthy living conditions. The cubist sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon was the brother of Marcel Duchamp, but while his mischievous genius of a sibling escaped the war by moving to America, Raymond volunteered. Before becoming an artist he'd trained as a doctor, so he served as a medical officer on the western front. This exposed him to typhoid and he died aged 41.
French, died 1918
French, died 1918
Nina Baird
Uncountable talents … the first world war memorial to fallen students of the Royal Academy
In the portico of the Royal Academy in London there is a memorial for the students who died in the first world war. The first name on it is that of a woman, Nina Baird, who died from typhoid as a result of her war work in north Africa. The list represents the uncountable talents lost to this war before they had a chance to develop. The first world war occured at one of the most creative moments in the history of art. There must undoubtedly be unknown geniuses among its dead.
British, died 1919
British, died 1919
Guillaume Apollinaire
The most iconic and most mourned war death among the modern art community in Paris was not an artist as such but an eloquent art critic, dazzling poet, magnificent personality and beloved friend of Pablo Picasso, whose promotion of modern art was an irresistible part of the art scene before 1914. The dream artist Giorgio de Chirico recorded a "premonition" of Apollinaire's death in a 1914 painting. Apollinaire was wounded in the head in 1916, dying of his injury two years later, aged 38, as the war ended. His death symbolised the end of the most ecstatic years of modern art.
French, died 1918
French, died 1918
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