Egon Schiele - "The Hug, 1917".

Egon Schiele: “The Hug, 1917"

Authorized color offset lithograph, premium-grade with high color intensity.

Condition: the work is in excellent condition.

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was one of the most radical figures of Austrian Expressionism. A protegé of Gustav Klimt, he developed a highly personal visual language characterized by angular lines, distorted anatomy, raw erotica, and unwavering psychological intensity. His work decisively broke with the academical ideals of beauty and focused instead on vulnerability, sexuality, and existential tension.

Despite his short life, cut short by the Spanish flu at just 28, Schiele produced an extraordinary amount of drawings, watercolors, and paintings that deeply shaped modern figurative art.

In the art market, Schiele’s works are among the most sought after from the early 20th century. Large oil paintings regularly fetch tens of millions of euros at auction, while works on paper, especially signed, well-preserved drawings and watercolors, are also highly valued and often reach seven-figure prices. His rarity, historical importance, and unmistakable style form the basis for consistently strong and resilient market demand.

The Hug, painted in 1917, is one of Schiele’s most powerful late works and a mature synthesis of his themes. The composition shows two intertwined figures in an intimate, almost desperate embrace. Their bodies are rendered with tensed muscles, angular limbs, and expressive distortion, emphasizing emotional urgency over sensuous harmony. The figures lie on a crumpled white sheet that serves as both a compositional anchor and a psychological space, detached from any narrative context. The background is rough-painted, with visible brushstrokes that reinforce the sense of immediacy.

The Hug balances delicacy and fear, love and dependence, and reflects Schiele’s focus in his later period on human connection as both salvation and vulnerability. Compared with his earlier, harsher erotic works, The Hug shows greater emotional depth and painterly richness, while preserving the unmistakable intensity.

Never framed and kept in dark archival storage between protective acid-free paper.
The displayed photos are part of the description.

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This artwork is carefully securely packed and shipped in protective acid-free paper.
No shipping to the Canary Islands.