Egon Schiele, the Complete Works: Including a Biography and a Catalogue Raisonne

When Schiele was 14, his father died from syphilis, a disease that had blackened his marriage. Sex and death seem closely linked in the oeuvre of the Austrian expressionist artist who died in 1918 at age 28, one day after his pregnant wife died of flu. As Kallir ( Gustav Klimt ) demonstrates in her penetrating, magnificently illustrated biography, Schiele's work goes beyond eroticism to speak about the awakening of personal/sexual identity, confrontation with the existential void, and a modernist awareness of the pervasive presence of death in life. In Kallir's appraisal, Schiele's imprisonment in 1912 on suspicion of ``public immorality'' initiated a ``humanizing process'' through which his portraits, allegories and landscapes deepened, while his erotic pictures underwent a depersonalization. More than half of this hefty volume is a catalogue raisonne illustrating and documenting some 3000 paintings, graphics and sculptures, including hundreds of seldom-seen self-portraits, still lifes and portraits. (Nov.)