Kallir Research Institute

Kallir Research Institute Foundation for the study of Austrian & German Expressionism and Self-Taught Art

Human figures often fill the page in Egon Schiele’s 1911 drawings, with poses and drapery extending to the edges of the ...
05/28/2026

Human figures often fill the page in Egon Schiele’s 1911 drawings, with poses and drapery extending to the edges of the sheet. Ill-defined supporting structures—trapezoidal “pillows” and womblike blankets—consume much of the pictorial space.

“Reclining Girl,” shown here, was executed during Schiele’s gradual transition to a more delicate drawing style. Because the artist still favored a soft pencil (by year’s end he’d prefer harder leads), his line is bold. His careful treatment of the sleeping subject’s hand and face soften the angular composition.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Reclining Girl,” 1911, pencil on paper.

It may come as a surprise that, despite an oeuvre consisting mainly of landscapes, Grandma Moses rarely painted outdoors...
05/26/2026

It may come as a surprise that, despite an oeuvre consisting mainly of landscapes, Grandma Moses rarely painted outdoors. She instead dedicated focused time to observing her surrounding environment. Moses reflected on her approach: “I find that I work much better this way than if I paint directly from nature. My imagination has freer play and my subjects are not confined to objects around me.”⁠
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Featuring roughly 80 of the self-taught artist’s imagined scenes, the Smithsonian American Art Museum retrospective “Grandma Moses: A Good Day’s Work” (through July 12, 2026) examines Moses’s lasting impact on American art history.

Ten years in the making, the exhibition includes 15 paintings either donated or promised to SAAM by the Kallir family, along with loans from dozens of American museums and private collections.

Image: Grandma Moses, "How the Wind Blows," 1946, oil on high-density fiberboard. Private collection, NY. © Grandma Moses Properties Co., NY.

Egon Schiele sometimes positioned himself on a ladder or stool in his studio, drawing his models from an elevated vantag...
05/23/2026

Egon Schiele sometimes positioned himself on a ladder or stool in his studio, drawing his models from an elevated vantage point. The Austrian artist’s signature typically corresponds with his placement in relation to his subject in the resulting works, potentially disorienting the viewer.

For this 1914 example, we may assume Schiele worked at the feet of the model reclining on a cushion below him. The sheet’s blank background and vertical orientation render the figure strangely weightless, crouched and balanced on tiptoe.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Reclining Woman with Blond Hair,” 1914, gouache, watercolor, and pencil on simile Japan paper, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Purchase, F***y B. Thalheimer Memorial Fund and Friends of the Art Fund.

In the last two years of his life, Egon Schiele received a significant number of portrait commissions. As had long been ...
05/21/2026

In the last two years of his life, Egon Schiele received a significant number of portrait commissions. As had long been his custom, Schiele executed many of these works at the request of artist friends and intellectuals. However, he was also increasingly approached by paying customers from outside his own circle, some of whom sought likenesses of their children.

This 1918 depiction of a little girl reveals Schiele’s facility as a draughtsman. The artist’s lines are heavy and impressively continuous, with each stroke offering a sense of texture or three-dimensional volume.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Seated Girl,” 1918, black crayon on paper.
Photo credit: © Auktionshaus im Kinsky GmbH, Vienna.

“Charge,” the fifth scene of Käthe Kollwitz’s “Peasants’ War” cycle, foregrounds an empowered female revolutionary. This...
05/19/2026

“Charge,” the fifth scene of Käthe Kollwitz’s “Peasants’ War” cycle, foregrounds an empowered female revolutionary. This figure represents Black Anna, one of the few women named in Wilhelm Zimmermann’s history of the 16th-century rebellion (upon which the German artist loosely based her seven image series).⁠
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Kollwitz achieved the now-iconic etching’s variety of textural and tonal effects by pressing patterned fabric and transfer paper into the soft ground on her printing plate. In a letter from early 1903, she described the results as “[her] best work to date.”⁠
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🎨 Image: Käthe Kollwitz, "Charge," 1902-03, etching. Plate 5 from the cycle "Peasants' War."

Most of Egon Schiele’s artistic output in 1913 appears to have been unrelated to any specific commission. Two monumental...
05/16/2026

Most of Egon Schiele’s artistic output in 1913 appears to have been unrelated to any specific commission. Two monumental allegorical oils begun in this year (but never completed) spawned what may be Schiele's single largest group of interrelated studies: his “torsos.” These depictions of headless, mostly female figures appear singly and in groups, either n**e or wearing short tunics.

The coloring in this example reflects the Austrian artist's growing concern with rendering three-dimensional volume on a two-dimensional surface. The model’s flesh is colored from the edges inward, while the visible brushstrokes on her garment convey both the fabric’s movement and the bulk of the underlying body.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Standing Semi-N**e with Brown-Green Vest, Back View (Torso),” 1913, gouache, watercolor, and pencil on paper.

Egon Schiele characteristically divided his early 1911 watercolors into discrete areas, each bounded by the contours of ...
05/14/2026

Egon Schiele characteristically divided his early 1911 watercolors into discrete areas, each bounded by the contours of the underlying drawing and treated differently. Hair and drapery were densely limned, usually in gouache, while flesh was more thinly washed.

In this example, it’s unclear whether the model’s lower body is covered by a garment, a sheet, or something else altogether. Her exposed flesh is more subtly and thinly colored, while Schiele has allowed delicate pencil lines alone to describe his subject’s eyes and lashes.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Semi-N**e,” 1911, gouache, watercolor, and pencil on cream wove paper.

Paula Modersohn-Becker’s depictions of mothers and children are among the most iconic of her nearly 700 paintings, thoug...
05/10/2026

Paula Modersohn-Becker’s depictions of mothers and children are among the most iconic of her nearly 700 paintings, though only 23 feature adult women with babies. For the artist, motherhood required unwavering selflessness. Of a nursing mother, she wrote that “the woman gave her life and her youth and her power to the child in utter simplicity, unaware that she was a heroine.”⁠
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🎨 Image: Paula Modersohn-Becker, “Mother with Child in Her Arms, Half-Length N**e II,” 1907, oil on canvas. Museum Ostwall, Dortmund.

The faces in Egon Schiele’s works on paper became increasingly stylized over the course of 1914. Pinprick, button, and s...
05/09/2026

The faces in Egon Schiele’s works on paper became increasingly stylized over the course of 1914. Pinprick, button, and saucer-like eyes are a common feature, appearing even in self-portraits.

In the example shown here, Schiele has created a highly recognizable depiction of himself in few lines: long arcs describe his brows and cheekbones, and the nose and mouth are likewise simplified. Though not natural color choices, the touches of green, blue, and red work in tandem with the selective cross-hatching to impart a realistic sense of volume to Schiele’s head, hands, and trunk.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Standing Male Figure (Self-Portrait),” circa 1914, gouache and pencil on paper, Národní Galerie, Prague.

Egon Schiele’s career as a portraitist began to take off in the autumn of 1910, when he was just 20 years old. At this s...
05/07/2026

Egon Schiele’s career as a portraitist began to take off in the autumn of 1910, when he was just 20 years old. At this stage of his development, the Austrian artist was less interested in creating a faithful likeness than with revealing personality through pose and posture.

Eduard Kosmack, a publisher of avant-garde design magazines, was apparently introduced to Schiele by the writer and critic Arthur Roessler. The present drawing is a study for a formal oil portrait commissioned in October 1910. It’s been suggested that Schiele’s rendering of his subject’s penetrating gaze alludes to Kosmack’s avocation as a hypnotist.

🎨 Image: Egon Schiele, “Portrait of Eduard Kosmack,” circa 1910, black crayon on paper, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich; Gift of Sofie & Emmanuel Fohn. © Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München.

After his debut at the 1908 Kunstschau, Oskar Kokoschka was taken under the wing of architect and art theorist Adolf Loo...
05/05/2026

After his debut at the 1908 Kunstschau, Oskar Kokoschka was taken under the wing of architect and art theorist Adolf Loos. Kokoschka’s training at Vienna’s School of Applied Arts had included little formal instruction in painting, and for Loos, the young artist’s idiosyncratic, largely self-taught technique faithfully captured the modern human condition. Loos began to arrange portrait commissions, connecting Kokoschka with prominent scholars and scientists, as well as with more bohemian characters. These early portraits, dating from 1909 to 1911, are marked by anxious, atmospheric surroundings.⁠
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This portrait of Dr. Emma Veronika Sanders was exhibited widely, including at Otto Kallir’s Neue Galerie in Vienna, before entering the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1967.

🎨 Image: Oskar Kokoschka, “Doctor Emma Veronika Sanders,” 1910, oil on canvas; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Mazer. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pro Litteris, Zurich.

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