Sheet with Compositional Drafts, undated

Egon Schiele’s (1890–1918) “obsession” with and passion for drawing manifested not only in the numerous works on paper he created throughout his short artist’s life but also in the many extant sketches and sketchbooks. These sketches are further significant as most of them paved the way for his paintings: Several of the artist’s paintings are directly related to a sketch. On this sheet, in actual fact a piece of letter paper with the logo of the Neukunstgruppe, we see a gridded draft featuring numerous people and what looks like coffins – Schiele painted the now lost work Resurrection (Graves), which boasts formal similarities, in 1913 – as well as compositional drafts for his 1915 large-format painting Mother with Two Children II. Schiele repeatedly addressed the theme of motherhood, for instance in Dead Mother I, Mother and Child and Blind Mother. The motif of Mother with Two Children is one that interested Schiele especially and found expression in another painting, created between 1915 and 1917, Mother with Two Children III, which today forms part of the collection of the Belvedere in Vienna. Schiele created further sketches on this theme in his sketchbook no. 5, dated 1914/15.

LScr, 2024