Egon Schiele was disturbed and misunderstood but was never a
pedophile, as some might think. He was tortured by the fact that society suppressed sexual desires while they were strong in his mind. His art is mostly comprised of
portraits but he also did paint many
landscapes. His portraits are painted and drawn with harsh, writhing lines and a white, empty background and are usually of nudes. He also painted many self-portraits of himself in the nude. He was considered a part of
Austrian
Expressionism, often grouped with
Oskar Kokoschka, a fellow Austrian. Besides the theme of sexuality, he also painted about angst and the cycle of life and death. He and his wife died of the
influenza epidemic of 1918.