At the turn of the twentieth century, Vienna emerged as a great cultural centre that stood at the forefront of developments in music, psychology, and the natural sciences. Equally influential, and still tremendously popular today, are the designs of the Wiener Werkstatte, or Vienna Workshop, a group that was at the heart of the city's cultural scene and whose collaborators included such luminaries as the architect Josef Hoffman, the designer Koloman Moser, and the painters Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. This guide to the arts and crafts of fin-de-siecle Vienna is an excellent introduction to their work in all media - from architecture, furniture, ceramics, and glass, to silver, fashion, and textiles, bookbinding, toys, painting, and the graphic arts - as well as a survey of the cultural development of this pivotal period.

Schiele's oils have often been reproduced and are well recognized. However, limited access to the fragile works on paper and dispersion among several collections have made for an unbalanced representation of his work as a draftsman. This book assembles drawings and watercolors from public and private collections and reproduces work from every year of the artist's career, beginning with the juvenilia and early academic studies. The focus means that work that is rarely reproduced is represented extensively, providing a unique opportunity to study the rapid artistic development of Schiele over the course of his brief twelve-year career. The book is organized chronologically and divided into year-by-year sections. Each section includes a text that discusses the major events in Schiele's life and the interrelation between the artist's drawing and developments in his oil painting. Features a previously unpublished Schiele watercolor and several works that have never been reproduced in color.