Photographs Capturing Egon Schiele’s Character

• Egon Schiele with intertwined fingers and lowered gaze
• Anton Josef Trčka (1893–1940)
• c. 1914
• Photograph
• Leopold Museum, Vienna

Egon Schiele explored ways of expressing himself with artistic facial movements and poses. Exaggerated self-expression by staged expressions like an actor is a common characteristic of his works. Anton Josef Trčka took a series of distinctive portrait photographs of Schiele and signed them with his pseudonym “Antios.” Schiele himself also left signatures on the pictures. Like in many of his own works, Schiele’s hands play a central role in expressing inner truths in photographs.