Egon Schiele - “The embrace, 1917”.

Egon Schiele: “The embrace, 1917”.
Authorized offset lithograph.

Condition: in excellent condition.
In the margin the artist's name, title of the work and copyright are printed in small letters.

Never been framed and kept in a dark archival storage between protective acid-free paper. The displayed photos are part of the description.
This artwork is carefully and securely packed and shipped in protective acid-free paper.
No shipping to the Canary Islands.

Egon Schiele was an important figurative painter of the 20th century from Austria. He produced an abundance of vibrant paintings and drawings, the vast majority of which depict the nude female form.

As a protegé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele became known for his raw, psychological intensity and bold representations of the human form. His work broke with the ornamental sensuality of the Vienna Secession and introduced a radical honesty that explored vulnerability, sexuality and the complexity of human emotions. Schiele's distinctive style is characterized by expressive line, distorted anatomy, and a striking use of color and space. His portraits and nudes, often confrontational in their gaze and posture, reveal an unbridled exploration of desire and identity. The artist's ability to capture both physical tension and psychological depth sets him apart from his contemporaries and confirms him as a central figure in the transition from Symbolism to Expressionism.

Schiele's career was tragically short. He died at the age of 28 during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, only a few days after his pregnant wife Edith passed away. Despite this, within less than a decade he produced an astonishingly intense body of work, which today places him among the most important artists of modern art.

The Embrace, painted in 1917, is one of Schiele's most powerful late works and a mature synthesis of his themes. The composition shows two entwined figures caught in an intimate, almost desperate embrace. Their bodies are rendered with tense muscles, angular limbs and expressive distortion, underscoring emotional urgency rather than sensuous harmony.

The figures lie on a crumpled white sheet that serves both as an anchor for the composition and as a psychological space, detached from any narrative context. The background is roughly painted, with visible brushstrokes that enhance the sense of immediacy. The Embrace balances tenderness and fear, love and dependence, and reflects Schiele's focus in his later period on human connectedness as both salvation and vulnerability. Compared with his earlier, sterner erotic works, The Embrace shows greater emotional depth and painterly richness, while preserving unmistakable intensity.

Today Schiele's works are among the most sought-after on the art market. Original drawings and paintings regularly fetch prices in the multiple millions of dollars at major auction houses. Works such as Houses with Colorful Laundry (1914) have brought in more than 40 million dollars, while his expressive figural drawings are highly valued by collectors around the world.

Some artists of comparable significance, such as Basquiat, Picasso, Hockney, Lichtenstein, Sorolla, Banksy, Brainwash, Miró, Nara, Soulages, Lagasse, Ramos, Rothko, Toulouse-Lautrec, Klimt, Modigliani, Hirst, Chagall, Koons, Haring, Indiana, Mondrian, Groening, Richter, Monroe, Kusama, Murakami, Testa, Villemot, Oldenburg, Hopper, Ripolles, Wesselmann, Magritte, Jenk, Orlinski, Wille, Rizzi, Manara, Thiebaud, Herrera, Laurent, Klein, Coa, Dior, Vuitton, Kaws, Valentino, Cappiello, Kandinsky, Warhol, Buffa, Tura, Castle, Ponti, Knoll, Le Corbusier, Robert, Johns, Starck, Breuer, Nelson, Mogensen, Ponti, Bertoia, Urquiola, Chillida, Magistretti, Gauguin, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Botero, Katz, Braque, among others.