Egon Schiele was born in 1890 in the Austrian town Tulln, just outside of Vienna. After his father's death in 1905, Schiele began studying painting and drawing at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts & Crafts), where Austrian painter Gustav Klimt was once a student, as well as the Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts), both in Vienna. However finding these institutions too conservative, he left in 1907 to seek out Klimt, the leading contemporary artist of the day, becoming the painter's protégé and friend. In some instances Schiele's unsettling erotic work gained him unwelcome attention. He was arrested in 1912 and charged with carnal knowledge and distributing immoral material, for which he was cleared, though he served 24 days in prison. That same year Schiele began a very public affair with Klimt's model Wally Neuzil, who he later dropped to marry the bourgeois Edith Harms in 1915. Schiele produced little in the two years directly following his marriage as he was called to serve in the army. In 1917 following his participation in the war, Schiele began to exhibit successfully across Europe with shows in Vienna, Zurich, Prague, and Dresden. When Klimt died in 1918, Schiele became Austria's leading artist, though he died of Spanish influenza at the age of 28, only months after Klimt and three days after his young pregnant wife.
