Egon Schiele - “The embrace, 1917”.

Egon Schiele: “The Embrace, 1917”.
Authorized offset lithograph.
Condition: in excellent condition.
In the margin, in small type, the artist's name, the title of the work and copyright appear.
Never framed and kept in a dark archival storage between protective acid-free paper. The shown photos are part of the description.
This artwork is carefully securely packed and shipped in protective acid-free paper.
Shipping to the Canary Islands is not available.

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

As a protegé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was known for his raw, psychological intensity and bold depictions 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 linework, distorted anatomy, and an striking use of color and space. His portraits and nudes, often confrontational in their gaze and posture, reveal an unabashed 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 Expressiveism.

Schiele's career was tragically short. He died at age 28 during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, only a few days after his pregnant wife Edith had died. Despite this, in less than a decade he produced an astonishingly intense body of work, which places him today among the leading 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 locked in an intimate, almost desperate embrace. Their bodies are rendered with taut muscles, angular limbs, and expressive deformation, emphasizing emotional urgency over sensual harmony.

The figures lie on a crumpled white sheet that functions both as a compositional anchor and a psychological space, detached from any narrative context. The background is rough; visible brushstrokes reinforce a sense of immediacy. The embrace balances tenderness and fear, love and dependence, reflecting Schiele's focus in his late period on human connectedness as both rescue and vulnerability. Compared with his earlier, harsher erotic works, The Embrace shows greater emotional depth and painterly richness, while maintaining the 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 multi-millions of dollars at major auction houses. Paintings such as Houses with Colorful Laundry (1914) have brought in more than 40 million dollars, while his expressive figure studies are highly valued by collectors worldwide.

Some artists of comparable significance, such as Basquiat, Picasso, Hockney, Lichtenstein, Sorolla, Banksy, Brainwash, Miró, Nara, Soulages, Lagasse, Ramos, Rothko, 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.