An Unwitting Monument

Stassa Edwards | Laphams Quarterly | 8th March 2021

“The human body contains histories.” Vienna in 1918 faced hunger, national decline, disease. Schiele’s art triumphed in that year’s Vienna Secessionist exhibition but then, the Spanish flu. Klimt died in February 1918, Schiele’s wife in October, Schiele himself three days later. Five days after that the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed. His last portraits, sparse drawings on scraps of paper, are collectively “an unwitting monument to immense loss”.