Like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Egon Schiele lived for just 28 years. And like Basquiat, he left behind a striking and completely original body of work. The Austrian, who displayed an unquestionable talent for drawing at an early age, took his initial inspiration from impressionism but was very quickly drawn to the Vienna Secession and the work of Klimt.
His tortured portraits and pallid, naked bodies, speak of human despair, of impossible love and the inevitability of death, their postures becoming more and more provocative. His self-portraits, meanwhile, reflect the interiority of the self.
Human beings are represented on a featureless monochrome background, their outlines heavy, their poses exaggerated. He renders the human body a powerful tool of expression. 
Schiele had close ties to the German expressionist movement and disappeared at almost the same time.