In August 1911, Egon Schiele (1890–1918) moves from Český Krumlov/Krumau to a small house with garden in Neulengbach, Lower Austria, where one of the artist’s most productive periods begins. It is there that he creates the painting
Landscape with Ravens: A flock of birds is moving through the narrow, bright patches of sky in the upper quarter of the painting, while the remaining space is filled with a depiction of the ground, built up in countless shades of brown and culminating in a knoll positioned roughly in the center and touching the upper edge of the picture. The boundary between earth and sky is marked by a crumbling fence. Hardly differentiated in color, a crooked hut and a bare autumnal tree are inscribed in the warm shades of the soil: Life and death, culture and nature appear inextricably connected. In September 1911, Schiele explains his understanding of the cycle of all beings in a letter to Oskar Reichel (1869–1943): “Earth breathes, smells, listens, feels in all its little parts; it gains, couples, decomposes and finds itself, enjoys what life is and seeks the logical philosophy of all in everything; days and years, of all transitoriness as far as one wishes and is able to think, as far as the spirit of beings is of high content; through our air, our light it has become something or many things, even creators, who are necessary, and has partially perished, consumed in itself, returned – into itself, and begins the smaller or greater cycle, everything that I want to call divine sprouts anew and brings forth and creates, out of the power which few can see, a creature.”
VG, 2022
