Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is one of the great Expressionist painters. He was taught by Gustav Klimt, and at a very early age, like his Viennese Secession predecessors broke with the traditions of official Austrian art. His numerous self portraits and nude models remained consistent throughout his career in keeping with his erotic, sensual and tormented visions of art. The paintings and text included in this book bring the extraordinary talent of this artist who, sadly, died of Spanish influenza at the age of 28 in Vienna.

Gustav Klimt (posterbook)

Gustav Klimt's art is thoroughly fin de siecle. It expresses the apocalyptic atmosphere of Vienna's upper middle-class society - a society devoted to the cultivation of aesthetic awareness and the cult of pleasure. The ecstatic joy which Klimt and his contemporaries found - or hoped to find - in beauty was constantly overshadowed by death. And death therefore plays an important role in Klimt's art. Klimt's fame, however, rests on his reputation as one of the greatest erotic painters and graphic artists of his times. In particular, his drawings, which have been widely admired for their artistic excellence, are dominated by the erotic portrayal of women.