Designer analysis - Schiele Egon

Schiel, Egon

Seated Woman with Bent Knee

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter during the early 19th century. His work has been associated as part of the expressionism movement that originated in German at the start of the 20th century. The ideals of expressionism are to present a subjective perspective, distorting a subject for emotional effect, promoting a response and ignoring the physical reality. I think this movement description is important in analysing this piece of his works.

The painting is a portrait of a young and beautiful woman, as titled; she is seated in an informal position with her knee bent on the ground. Her head resting upon it as she loosely curls her arms around her leg. The other leg opens out her body position exposing herself. This accompanied with the head facing towards the artist expands the woman's body language and allows the viewer to feel engaged with the subject.

Many of her features suggest personality traits of a vibrant, adventurous, unafraid, and mischievous person; distinctively her short, thick, uncontrollable, bouncy, albany curls.

Her facial expression is serious but also flirty. The raised eyebrows and pouting lips contribute to the erotic salutations but it is the gaze that is most exciting, I feel as if her wide eyes are almost asking a question and demanding the answer. This gaze could feels almost threatening.

The body proportions aren't exact. the neck is elongated and her legs and hips look larger then a normal perspective, this allows her body to sit comfortably in the lounged position.

The pallet is purposely limited in the painting upon the white background. The colour is focused on the orange albany hair, the turquoise green sleeveless top and black leggings. The rest of the image is comprised of her pale cream skin, muffled white shorts and unpainted shoes. The only other colour focus point is her red lips.
Upon the bright colours of her hair, top and leggings, the brush strokes are exaggerated almost scraped onto the canvas creating dense, long, thick irrigated lines.

The softer parts of the painting have mainly, unnoticeable brush marks. Her skin has instead a blotchy texture of occasional browns and albans creating blemishes, dirt marks or shading, giving an unwashed finished. The shorts look almost unpainted the outlines are a strong array or thin lines and the fill is merely a white speckle.

The two colour differences create a balance between the positive and negative spaces in the image. if the figure had been entirely finished it would not seat into the background comfortably.