Self-Portrait (recto); Female Nude Reclining (verso)

Egon Schiele's double-sided "Self-Portrait" (1913) is a graphite drawing with oil paint on the recto and graphite on the verso, on ivory wove paper. Schiele (1890–1918) was the most provocative figurative artist of early 20th-century Vienna, known for his anguished, sexually explicit self-portraits and figure drawings. This self-portrait from 1913, when Schiele was 23, shows his characteristic intensity: the body is twisted and distorted, the face is gaunt and angular, the expression is confrontational. The combination of graphite and oil paint on the recto is unusual, the oil adding passages of color to the primarily graphite drawing. The verso features a reclining female nude in graphite. The double-sided nature of this sheet makes it particularly valuable, showing the artist working on both self-representation and the female figure that was his other great subject. Schiele's self-portraits are among the most psychologically raw in the history of art, documents of a young artist's struggle with identity, mortality, and the creative impulse.

Schiele's self-portraits represent the extreme of Expressionist self-examination, pushing the representation of the self to levels of psychological and physical exposure that had never been seen in Western art.

This double-sided self-portrait captures Schiele's intense artistic vision, the distorted body and confrontational expression pushing the boundaries of self-representation while the verso nude reveals his other great subject.