Leopold Museum Publishes Conference Volume on the 5th Egon Schiele Symposium The 2023 Conference Focused on Schiele’s Network, His Circle of Friends and Acquaintances

26.09.2024

The Egon Schiele Symposium, which is held biannually at the Leopold Museum, provides a key platform for the presentation of and the discourse on research findings into the life and oeuvre of the groundbreaking Austrian Expressionist. Home to the Egon Schiele Documentation Center and the world’s largest and most eminent collection of works by Egon Schiele, the Leopold Museum is an ideal meeting place for researchers, experts and audiences interested in Schiele.

The invitation extended by the initiators of the symposium’s 5th edition, the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Senior Curator Kerstin Jesse, was followed by Philipp Blom, Régine Bonnefoit, Tobias Burg, Ulrike Emberger, Laura Feurle, Simone Hönigl, Alexander Klee and Alexandra Matzner, who all spoke at the conference. In order to accommodate international interest in the symposium, all the contributions to the conference were translated for the first time in their entirety into English to be published a bilingual publication.

“Seeing as the 4th Egon Schiele Symposium in 2021 could only take place in the digital sphere due to the restrictions on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, we were especially delighted to be able to personally welcome numerous experts and art enthusiasts for an animated exchange in 2023. The Leopold Museum thanks all speakers for their efforts and expertise, and for sharing their latest research findings with an interested audience. Special thanks go to Larry Heller, the grandson of Schiele’s fellow artist Felix Albrecht Harta, for his support.”

Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum

“The 5th Egon Schiele Symposium focused on Schiele’s network, and his numerous friendships and acquaintances. The exceptional artist was very keen to progress and to create new things in art, and to break with established conventions and traditions. To this end, he sought contact with like-minded artists, and time and again exploited the potential of groups and collectives. He turned out to be an avid networker and gifted visionary, who emerged both as a founder of artists’ associations and a curator of exhibitions, while he nurtured contacts with patrons and collectors who appreciated his expressive and modern art.”

Kerstin Jesse, Senior Curator at the Leopold Museum

The Speakers and Their Contributions to the 5th Egon Schiele Symposium

The symposium shone the spotlight on Egon Schiele’s artist friends and acquaintances. The speakers addressed select aspects in connection with his companions Albert Paris Gütersloh, Felix Albrecht Harta, Adolf Hölzel and Alexander Koch, Karl-Ernst Osthaus, Max Oppenheimer and Oskar Kokoschka.

In his keynote speech on the topic Vienna 1914 – Bodies, Facades, Identities, the historian and bestselling author Philipp Blom highlighted the interest in the relationship of tension between form and function in the art of the Imperial-Royal monarchy. In his contribution titled “I only regret that you have to work under such difficult circumstances.” Karl-Ernst Osthaus as Egon Schiele’s Early Collector, the art historian Tobias Burg, curator at Museum Folkwang in Essen, explored the intense contact between the eminent art patron Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874–1921) and Egon Schiele. The art historian, author and curator Alexandra Matzner dedicated her essay United by “Otherness” – Albert Paris Gütersloh and Schiele to Egon Schiele’s artist friend Albert Paris Gütersloh (1887–1973). The two artists’ friendship, which lasted some ten years, was shaped by mutual respect. Artist Friends – Artist Foes: The Relationship between Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka was the theme investigated by Régine Bonnefoit. The art historian, curator and university professor trained the spotlight on several overlaps in the lives of the two artists, which make the non-relationship between them appear like an unlikely myth, and Kokoschka’s defamations of Schiele as a strategy of biographical self-representation. Kerstin Jesse, Senior Curator at the Leopold Museum, devoted her symposium contribution to Max Oppenheimer, Called MOPP: Schiele’s “Contemporary and Fellow Combatant”, one of Schiele’s early companions. Looking more closely at their encounter and at individual artworks by Oppenheimer and Schiele, Jesse highlighted communalities and differences between them. Simone Hönigl, who looks after the artist’s autographs at the Leopold Museum’s Egon Schiele Documentation Center, focused in her contribution “Would you agree to draw me for this purpose?” – Egon Schiele and Felix Albrecht Harta on the friendship between Schiele and Harta (1884–1967). Alexander Klee, curator at the Belvedere in Vienna, explained in his deliberations on the subject of Egon Schiele and Adolf Hölzel. Networking in Times of War that, while Hölzel (1853–1934) and Schiele likely never met in person, they had several points of contact through common acquaintances, including the publisher Alexander Koch (1860–1939). In her presentation Thinking Hands? On the Theory of the Artistic Practice of Vienna’s “Neukunst”, curator Laura Feurle sounded out the implications for the conception of the artistic act of production in Viennese Modernism. Finally, Ulrike Emberger cited concrete examples to elucidate the effects of export restrictions on the Schiele art market in her contribution Protected! Rescued! Released! Egon Schiele and Monument Protection.

Key Data on the Conference Volume on the 5th Egon Schiele Symposium

Title: Egon Schiele. Netzwerke und Freundschaften. Tagungsband zum 5. Egon Schiele-Symposium im Leopold Museum, 2023 (erschienen 2024) | Egon Schiele. Networking and Friendships. Conference Volume on the 5th Egon Schiele Symposium at the Leopold Museum, 2023 (published in 2024)

Editors: Kerstin Jesse, Hans-Peter Wipplinger

Authors: Philipp Blom, Régine Bonnefoit, Tobias Burg, Ulrike Emberger, Laura Feurle, Simone Hönigl, Kerstin Jesse, Alexander Klee, Alexandra Matzner, Hans-Peter Wipplinger

19.5 x 24.5 cm, 200 pages, 96 illustrations

A bilingual publication in German and English.

Sales price: EUR 14.90

Available at the Leopold Museum Shop: leopoldmuseum.org/shop

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