The exhibition Times of Upheaval interweaves biographical and artistic elements and deals with the ruptures and changes in Schiele's "late work" from 1914 to 1918, to which less attention has been paid to date. Schiele gradually abandoned the radical formal experiments of the years 1910 to 1914 and developed a more realistic style characterized by a deeper empathy. His strokes calmed down, became more flowing and organic, and the sitters gained in physical fullness. The exhibition also provides new insights into this decisive period through the interweaving of contemporary archive material, such as Edith Schiele's previously unpublished diary.

Egon Schiele, Seated Woman with Raised Knee, 1917 © Národní Galerie, Prague, Photo: National Gallery Prague 2024

Egon Schiele, Seated Woman with Raised Knee, 1917 © Národní Galerie, Prague, Photo: National Gallery Prague 2024

The purely monographic show, which is divided into nine thematic areas - Search for the Self | Couples | Edith Anna Schiele, née Harms | Family | Life in the Army | Landscape | The Female Figure | Portraits | Success and Last Works - presents around 130 works of art from Austrian and international collections. The large-format portrait of the painter Albert Paris von Gütersloh from 1918 from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota, is one of the highlights of the show, as are four previously unknown works on paper, which are being exhibited for the first time.
March 28 to July 13, 2025

Franz Hagenauer donation
Leopold Museum receives extensive Franz Hagenauer donation
The entrepreneurial Breinsberg family bequeaths 139 outstanding works by the pioneering metal sculptor to the museum. The exquisite works of art, which have been collected over decades, complement the Hagenauer collection of the Leopold Museum, which now has the world's most extensive and important collection on Franz Hagenauer (1906-1986), the "designer among sculptors".

Franz Hagenauer, Torso, 1929 © Breinsberg Collection Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna © Caja Hagenauer, Vienna

Franz Hagenauer, Torso, 1929 © Breinsberg Collection Photo: Leopold Museum, Vienna © Caja Hagenauer, Vienna

"The heads he created from the late 1930s onwards, often reduced to mere ovoids made of embossed metal, are among the most radical modernist advances in Austrian art of the interwar period," explains Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum. In 2022, the Leopold Museum had already dedicated a comprehensive, long overdue retrospective to the artist with more than 170 exhibits. The majority of the loans came from the estate of Monika and Erich Breinsberg. Selected heads and torsos by Franz Hagenauer can now be seen in the permanent presentation From Expressionism to New Objectivity on level 0.

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