Egon Schiele’s Print Works

• Sorrow
• Egon Schiele (1890–1918)
• 1914
• Drypoint etching in black on paper
• Leopold Museum, Vienna

Egon Schiele, who often struggled financially, decided to enter the lucrative business of prints. Schiele mastered the technique of drypoint* over a few months in the late spring and early summer of 1914 and completed six pieces. These works revisit his familiar themes of the nude and psychologically intense portraits. He expressed the agonies of human mind with contorted body and facial expressions. In 1919, Avalun Verlag, the Austrian publishing company, acquired the plates for both works and made editions of 200 impressions each.

*Drypoint is a printmaking technique of scratching the design onto a metal plate with sharp instrument.