Lilly Steiner is a powerful drawing created by Egon Schiele in 1918, the final year of his life. Executed in stark black crayon on paper, this portrait exemplifies the intense, linear style Schiele cultivated during his maturation within Viennese Modernism. The date, 1918, places the work at the close of the First World War and just months before Schiele’s premature death, lending an urgent psychological weight to his late portraits of women.
Schiele used the essential nature of the black crayon medium to maximum effect. Rather than seeking polished realism, the drawing emphasizes contour, structure, and expression. The lines defining the sitter's features are rapid and sharp, typical of Schiele’s technique, capturing an immediate, unvarnished depiction of the subject. The resulting work functions as an intimate character study, highlighting the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with probing the inner lives of his models through highly individualized portraits.
This pivotal drawing is an important component of Schiele’s surviving oeuvre and currently resides in the esteemed collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Because of its historical significance and status, this work is frequently studied by scholars and admired by the general public. High-quality prints of the piece are often available through institutions supporting the dissemination of art historical images, thereby contributing to the visibility of the Schiele catalog within the public domain.
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