Erwin Mitsch's authoritative study of Egon Schiele's paintings and drawings includes a careful and representative selection of his nudes, portraits, allegories and landscapes, in order to provide a thorough overview and penetrative insight into the artist's character and life as well as his works themselves. The Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was a crucial and widely recognized figure in the birth of modern art. His uncompromising style of expression gave form to the anxieties and insecurities that beset Western culture at the turn of the nineteenth century, stigmatizing modern art to this day.