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Austrian painter, draughtsman and printmaker.
He is, with Oskar Kokoschka, one of the major figures of Austrian EXPRESSIONISM, in spite of the brevity of his artistic career, which lasted only about ten years. While remaining faithful to the initial influences on his work of the Vienna Secession and in particular of the art of Gustav Klimt, he developed a highly personal and expressive style and introduced psychologically and sexually intense subject-matter that was radical in its subjectivity and highly influential on later generations of artists.

As a student at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts (1907–09), Schiele was strongly influenced by the Jugendstil movement, the German Art Nouveau. He met Gustav Klimt, leader of the Vienna Sezession group, and the linearity and subtlety of Schiele's work owe much to Klimt's decorative elegance. Schiele, however, emphasized expression over decoration, heightening the emotive power of line with a feverish tension. He concentrated from the beginning on the human figure, and his candid, agitated treatment of erotic themes caused a sensation.

In 1909 he helped found the Neukunstgruppe (New Art Group) in Vienna. From 1911 onward he exhibited throughout Europe, and a special room was devoted to his work at a 1918 Sezessionist exhibit in Vienna, shortly before his death from Spanish influenza. Important works include “The Self Seer” (1911), “The Cardinal and Nun” (1912), and “Embrace” (1917). His landscapes exhibit the same febrile quality of colour and line.