Mortality and death are existential themes that Schiele ventured to address time and again—here associated with a biographical event. It shows a couple, the young woman clinging with both arms to her lover. The man, a self-portrait of Schiele, stares into space. The fragile balance—the artist is alluding to this in the figures’ unstable poses—seems as if it could shatter at any moment. The girl is his long-term partner and model Wally Neuzil. He had split up with her to marry Edith Harms, who was from a middle-class family. After their separation, Neuzil trained as a nurse. In 1917 she died of scarlet fever during her wartime deployment.
Mortality and death are existential them