The Pornographic World of Egon Schiele’s Nudes

Egon Schiele’s nudes can challenge us and our preconceptions of the artistic tradition of the “nude”. He didn’t paint or draw idealized goddesses. He preferred to present female and male genitalia in full light. Many of the female nudes remind one of pornographic images and include props, such as stockings, typically associated with prostitution. Schiele often asked sex workers to model for him, but he also portrayed other women who were close to him. You can’t escape the palpable eroticism of his work, which is often truly explicit.

Egon Schiele led a bohemian life within the early 20th-century Viennese café culture, inhabited by radical intellectuals who questioned about sex, desire, death, and the nature of humanity. Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1899. Against this background, Schiele sought to expose the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and confront the realities of the human condition. The artist produced some of the most radical depictions of the human figure in modern art—so radical that in 1912 he was imprisoned for two months for exhibiting his “offensive” nudes.

Below is a selection of nudes from the hundreds Schiele produced during his short life.

1. Standing Nude in Red Jacket

2. Black-Haired Nude Girl Standing

3. Reclining Female Nude with Legs Spread Apart

4. Seated Female Nude with Black Stockings

5. Blonde Nude Model Sitting on Brownish-Blue Cloth

6. Two Girls Lying Entwined

7. Kneeling Semi-Nude

8. Sitting Female Nude with Yellow Blanket

9. Girl with the Green Stockings

10. Crouching Nude Girl with Lowered Head

11. Red-Head Girl in Black Dress with Spreaded Legs

12. Crouching Woman with Green Kerchief

13. Two Girls Embracing (Two Friends)

14. Lying Woman

15. Female Nude with Blue Cloth