Death And The Maiden Analysis

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Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter born in 1890 known for his paintings that provoked symbolism, and also for his very different artistic styles. According to The Art Story, “Schiele’s portraits and self-portraits helped re-establish the vitality of both genres with their unprecedented level of emotional and sexual directness and use of figural distortion in place of conventional notions of beauty.” Schiele was a fan of Gustav Klimt, and in his first paintings someone can see the similarities between Klimt and Schiele. Egon Schiele’s painting, Death and the Maiden, exhibits the same design elements as Klimt’s paintings. The similarities can be seen how the figures in Schiele’s painting are consumed by their clothes, and by the very abstract …show more content…

According to the Art Story, “the female figure, gaunt and tattered, clings to the male figure of death, while surrounded by and equally tattered, quasi-surreal landscape.” One of the main things that is haunting about this painting is how the maiden clings to the man, that is essentially death. It seems like such a dark idea, but when someone reads the history of Schiele he or she can find that this painting was personal to him. The story behind the painting is said to be dealing with the death of true love. Death and the Maiden was painted around the time Schiele separated from his love, Wally Neuzil. According to Schiele’s history, he painted this right before he got married to Edith Harms as a memory of his lost love. Schiele’s painted Death and the Maiden to symbolize the true love can die. If someone was to look closely at the painting he or she could see the man’s eyes, which have a blank and dispassionate stare. Then the viewer can look at the woman, and see that she is clinging to him, holding onto him. This seems to suggest that Schiele wanted to let Neuzil go, but she was trying to keep them together. According to Michael Glover of the Independent

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