Egon Schiele - "The Embrace"

Author: Egon Shiele (1890-1918)
Title: The Embrace (1917)
Size: 60 x 80 cm
Offset print made on thick 250g, high-quality paper. Displays a vivid and sharp image quality.
Copyright: E Shiele - Umarmung - Foto Sammlung Der Oesterr. Galerie Wien - 33191. M&S Firenze. Printed in Italy. New to frame
Shipping in a rigid tube via certified express mail.
It is possible to collect more than one object, from the same auction, in the same shipment.

When we watch this painting we immediately understand that it exhales a reflection of harmony between both lovers, Egon Schiele and his wife Edith Harms. They got married in 1915 and Schiele’s paintings, on the months that followed the wedding, became less tortured and depressive. In this large canvas they lie on a rumpled white sheet over a yellow cover with their arms interlocked. The woman’s hair tumbles over the pillow, her face is turned away and her hand in placed on the man’s shoulder in a manner reminiscent of Klimt’s The Kiss, which Schiele, as a friend and protégé of Klimt, knew well.

Schiele’s drawings and paintings have frequently drawn the accusation of pornography but, as other have pointed out, they are imbued with humanity, which sets them apart from such works.

The tender unity of “The Embrace” marks a distinct change from the explicitly sexual paintings and drawings that preceded it and reflects Schiele’s growing contentment in married life. However, at six month pregnant Edith died in the Spanish Influenza epidemic that swept through Europe after the war. Schiele died three days later, at the age of twenty-eight.