Portrait of Albert Paris von Gütersloh

Egon Schiele, 1918

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Artist: Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890–1918)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 55 1/8 x 43 7/16 in. (140.02 x 110.33 cm) (canvas)
Museum: Minneapolis Institute of Art
Rights: Public Domain Mark

Schiele’s death during the 1918 influenza pandemic, at the age of only twenty-eight, left this portrait of his friend Albert Paris von Gütersloh (1887–1973) unfinished. Nonetheless, the work is a masterpiece of Austrian Expressionist portraiture. Gütersloh was a painter, writer, actor, producer, and stage designer, who wrote the first study of Schiele’s art in 1911. Schiele admired his friend’s extraordinary intellectual and artistic talents and sought to portray him as a creative genius. With hands raised in a gesture of both attraction and repulsion, eyes transfixed and body tense, Gütersloh is shown at the moment of artistic inspiration.

Text: Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), CC BY 4.0.