“Field of Flowers”
This chalk/pastel/gouache/gold paint on paper piece is by the Austrian expressionism artist, Egon Schiele, from 1910 and is titled “Field of Flowers”. It was made just one year after Schiele abandoned his academic study and found his art free from the more traditional restraints of school.
Though he is mostly known for his figurative drawings, he did a series of works dedicated to trees and flowers. Schiele was very prolific during his short life, producing over 3,000 works of art. Unlike other artists of his day (and today) he regarded drawings as one of the finer art mediums because of its immediacy and ease of expression.
Schiele said “I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences. I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour…”
“Field of Flowers” is currently in a private collection.
For more on Egon Schiele, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
