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Egon Schiele, Mutterschaft
(1914)
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In an ambivalent posture, sitting or lying on a patchwork blanket, a female figure with a manneristically twisted and elongated body is suckling a peculiarly bald-headed infant, which appears to be a blend of a foetus and death's head, not unlike Munch's creature in The Scream. With her eyes closed and the stained, even decomposing white flesh, so typical of Schiele's style, the woman resembles a corpse. The whole scene, bitterly playing on and at the same time negating the traditional view of maternity, seems to be set in a dark and abysmal void. In blatant contrast to the paintings of Klimt and the artists of the Vienna Secession, Schiele here articulates his repudiation of the vitality and optimism of Jugendstil and the belle époque.
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