Symptoms of influenza mean the last days in the life of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890-1918) seem to be played out beyond the confines of a set time and space. His stylised portraits come to live and edge him further towards death. Choreographer Stuart has transformed his images into a transparent movement language that by turns follows and ignores the music by Alexander von Zemlinsky. The rawly expressive and confrontational imagery reflects the powerful effect of Schiele’s drawings and paintings.
Vienna, Austria, 1910. The young painter Egon Schiele is a rising artist, provocative and free, whose work, characterized by eroticism, shocks as much as it fascinates art lovers.
The life of cursed painter Egon Shiele, specialized in nudes, and on his late conflicting love for two women.
The film dramatises the imprisonment of Schiele in Neulengbach in 1911, and looks at the authenticity of Schile's prison diary, which was published after his death.