Egon Schiele:
Revelation (Offenbarung), 1911
Oil on canvas
90 × 85 cm
©Leopold Museum, Vienna
(Kallir P203)

Most of Egon Schiele’s canvases arrive without an explanation. He routinely left his viewers to decipher the heavy distortions and raw tension of his linework entirely on their own. Yet, a letter from September 1911, according to the Leopold Museum, addressed to his friend Hermann Engel, breaks this habitual silence. In it, the twenty-one-year-old artist offers a direct, highly unusual commentary explaining exactly what he intended to capture within the heavy layers of Revelation (Offenbarung).

The year 1911 marked a shift in Schiele’s creative life. He was actively stepping away from the flat, decorative gilding of his mentor, Gustav Klimt. Instead, he began experimenting with a rougher, stripped-back technique designed to expose what lay beneath the skin.

The Concept of Physical Light

In his correspondence with Engel, Schiele notes that the composition does not depict a standard physical interaction. Instead, it tracks the invisible, almost magnetic pull that an extraordinary individual exerts over ordinary people. He explicitly wrote that this dominant figure could be a thinker, a poet, or a spiritualist.

Schiele viewed the human body as a temporary vessel that consumes its own energy over time. He detailed this philosophy in the letter:

“The picture must emanate light from within itself, the bodies have their own light which they consume throughout life; they burn up; they are unilluminated.”

On the canvas, the central figure stands with closed eyes, entirely detached from his surroundings. He does not rely on physical sight; rather, he emits a dense, heavy orange glow that fills the space. Below him, a smaller, stylized figure bends forward in total submission. Rather than framing this relationship through traditional religious worship, Schiele chose the language of early twentieth-century science and electricity to describe the phenomenon, stating that “positive and negative electricity merge” as the small figure is pulled into the greater field of energy.

Structure and Balance

The visual layout of the canvas relies on a careful balance between the two figures. Schiele splits the composition into two distinct parts using color and shape. The right side is filled with warm, dense tones—heavy reds, bright oranges, and dark browns that highlight the active, burning energy of the main figure.

To keep the artwork from feeling completely chaotic or heavy on one side, the left side introduces a secondary presence. Schiele described this element as a being that is “different yet equal to the great.” This contrast provides a clean visual weight, keeping the entire image grounded. By looking past traditional portraiture, Revelation stands as a rare, written testament to Schiele’s early obsession with the unseen currents that connect or dominate human minds.

History of the Canvas

The painting has a clearly documented trail through the early Viennese avant-garde circles. Initially owned by Hermann Engel, it later entered the collection of the prominent art publisher Richard Lanyi. After passing through further private hands during the mid-century, it was purchased in 1964 by Dr. Rudolf Leopold. It eventually transitioned into the permanent display of the Leopold Museum in Vienna, where the original ink-on-paper letter from September 1911 is also preserved.