ART DOC: Lecture by Irma Kozina and screening of the film “Egon Schiele. Beyond taboos” | MKO

LECTURE “Egon Schiele — provocateur or brilliant artist?”

Prior to the screening of the film, Professor Irma Kozina's lecture will focus primarily on the work of this young deceased artist — a victim of the Spanish flu, which claimed thousands of lives in 1918. The socio-cultural context, which is the main theme in the film, will be subordinated to an in-depth analysis of unique works of art, which still have a strong impact on the contemporary audience.

FILM DESCRIPTION:

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) — a boy from the Austro-Hungarian province, whose art adorns the most important museums of the world, a provocateur accused of spreading pornography, a precursor of expressionism, on whose canvases death and lust intertwine in a loving embrace. Schiele, who died at the age of only 28, left behind an astonishingly rich body of work, turning the aesthetic canons upside down. “Egon Schiele. Beyond Taboo” draws a fascinating portrait of a brilliant artist: a restless child, crowned by the First World War and the plague of the era, who, through eroticism, reached the most fragile, intimate and defenseless in us.

“Egon Schiele. Beyond Taboo” tells about what formed the inner world of the artist. So we visit decadent Vienna and Prague bathed in Art Nouveau, from which he fled to the province, we end up in Cesky Krumlov or Austrian Neulengbach, where he humiliated the provinces. We learn about complicated relationships with women: a fascination with Gerti's sister, a passionate relationship with muse Valerie Neuzil, a long-distance marriage with Edith Harms. One of the key heroines of this biography is also the mother, indifferent to the talent of her son. “I painted to be seen,” Schiele noted.

He created at a time of questioning bourgeois norms and the flourishing of art, in the shadow of a declining empire. It is not surprising that the creators of the documentary emphasize the similarities between the artist and Franz Kafka. Both were preoccupied with the relationship of sex and death, lived with a premonition of disaster and radically changed the landscape of painting and literature. Filled with masterpieces “Egon Schiele. Beyond Taboo” presents treasures from the world's largest collection of Schiele's paintings in Vienna's Leopold Museum. Nudity no longer outrages anyone, but what really exposes Schiele is the body's defenselessness against the action of time. And this is still a powerful taboo.

Lecture duration: approx. 60 min

Prof. Irma Kozina — born on 5 February 1964 in Sucha Beskidzka, graduated in art history at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1988 (master's thesis on Polish grave flags written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hab. Jan K. Ostrowski). Since 1998 he has been teaching art history and design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. She is the author of many publications on art.

2026 | Italy | dir. M. Mally | 92 min | Documentary | 15+ | SUBTITLES

Coordinators: Katarzyna Filak, Aleksandra Jasiurkowska

Tickets: 18/22 zł