Erwin Osen: Egon Schiele’s Artist Friend

by Christian Bauer (Editor)

The first book devoted to a forgotten expressionist artist and the impact he had on his famous companion.
 
A multifaceted artist and charismatic figure in Vienna’s art scene, Erwin Osen (1891–1970) is best known today as Egon Schiele’s friend and one of his models. While their relationship inspired some of Schiele’s masterpieces, Osen also left his mark on expressionism through his work, which is ripe for rediscovery.

A true Renaissance man, Osen counted drawing and painting among his art practices, as well as stage decor and set design, acting, pantomime, singing, cabaret, theater, and filmmaking. He and Schiele shared a studio, as well as an interest in the experience of patients in healthcare settings. Both a biography and a chronicle of the fruitful interaction between two artists, Erwin Osen shines a light on a fascinating and underappreciated creative.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published October 5, 2023

Reviews

[Serge Baeken · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well documented, well-written book about the relationship between these two friends. Convincing and insightful, with excellent reproductions. The book has an original, non-linear structure for a biography, starting with the most pressing questions and continuing with a general overview of Osen's life. Young Osen is portrayed as a flamboyant figure, a multi-faceted artist in his own right (an actor, an expressionist mime, a singer, a ballet dancer, a designer of theatrical stages and costumes, a draughtsman, a painter, a graphic designer and a filmmaker), that had great impact on Schiele and on his art. Clearly Osen led Schiele away from the influence of Klimt and made him take up the challenge to rapidly develop his own, extreme, expressionistic style in 1910, when they even shared a studio for a while (and apparently many a spliff.) It's strange that most Schiele-biographies leave this out, almost as if on purpose. Supposedly Osen didn't fit the narrative that was chosen to promote Schiele post-mortem. Schiele's dealer, the art critic Arthur Roessler surely did commit character-assassination by publishing nasty lies about Osen, that made it hard for him to continue as an artist, —though he did. It's a pity Roessler's text is not included in the book, I'll have to try to find it somewhere else. The book does show the great influence Schiele had on Osen too, although the latter never reaches the same artistic heights (sorry, Erwin. But take comfort in the fact that hardly any artist does.) You can check for yourselves because there are many great reproductions of Osen's art throughout the pages.

Text in German and English.