A great innovator of modern figure painting, Egon Schiele is known for creating erotic and deeply psychological portraits, on many occasions using himself as the subject. Schiele often used color sparingly, his work identifiable instead by his characteristic sinuous black line. In his many self-portraits, Schiele is typically nude and staring directly towards the viewer, making the works both revealing and confrontational. Schiele’s female subjects are often nude as well, their bodies portrayed in various contorted positions. Whether representing himself or others, Schiele’s pictures are strikingly raw and direct. A student of the famous Symbolist artist Gustav Klimt, Schiele’s body of landscapes (though only a small collection) evoked Klimt’s folkloric tone and flattened compositional space. Schiele was prolific, but his artistic career ended tragically when he fell victim to the Spanish flu in 1918 at only 28 years of age.