Red hair, bright eyes

The Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and shortly afterwards founded, together with other unsatisfied painters, the Group of New Art. Thus he began to exhibit his work independently, characterized by long eyelashes and seductive red lips, which remind us of Nabokov’s Lolita.

When he was still in Vienna, he met Gustav Klimt, who became his friend and mentor and introduced him to one of his most famous models, Valerie Neuzel, known as Wally. Her red hair and bright eyes are easily identifiable.

Schiele’s life was complicated and tortuous, his drawings were, on several occasions, branded as pornographic, which has not prevented him from being considered, despite his early death, as one of the greatest representatives of Austrian expressionism.

“Forgive me for searching for you
so clumsily, inside.
Forgive me for the pain, at least once.
I want to
get the best of you, out of you.
He who does not dress you and whom I see,
Swimmer of your depth, beautiful”.

Pedro Salinas, The voice owed to you, 1933.