Egon Schiele was born in Vienna in 1890, growing up in the same milieu that nurtured the theories of Freud. Showing a precious talent as a child, he developed a distinctive personal style that matched his anguished obsession with sex, life and death. His nudes and self-portraits, with their unflinching honesty, are among the most intense and powerful portrayals of sexual feeling in Western art. Although he died young he produced a body of paintings, watercolours and drawings that rank him among the most original artists of the early twentieth century, and an important forerunner of the Expressionist movement.

In this book Christopher Short presents a biographical introduction and survey of Schiele's art, followed by detailed commentaries on a selection of 48 male and female nudes, self-portraits, portraits, landscapes and allegorical works representing a full cross-section of the artist's finest works in all media.