[Encyclios]

Expressionism in Vienna

In Vienna, expressionism is more coherent. This is partly due to the symbolism of Klimt, whose intentions are expressed in a drawing, often at the service of an intense eroticism, and partly that of Hodler (who exhibited at the Viennese Secession in 1903).

The efficacy of the image rests in both cases on a graphic tension taken to the extreme, often deforming, whose heir must have been above all Egon Schiele.
Schiele, influenced by Van Gogh (exhibited in Vienna in 1906), took up his profound feelings of sexual frustration and irremediable isolation, which, on the other hand, diminished greatly once the artist married (Seated Nude with Raised Arm, 1910; Vienna, private collection).

Oskar Kokoschka finally provides the link between Vienna and Berlin, where he worked for Walden. Less harsh than Schiele, but more receptive than him, between 1907 and 1914 he produced a series of drawn and painted portraits, which are authentic attempts at introspection (Herwarth Walden, 1910: Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie); but whose immediate legibility is far from the transpositions of Die Brücke or Jawlensky.