According to a museum, an Egon Schiele painting depicting the artist's uncle and legal guardian has been rediscovered after being missing for more than 90 years. Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano (1907) was discovered in a private collection in Vienna and will be shown publicly for the first time at the Leopold Museum in Austria, which houses the largest and most eminent collection of works by the great expressionist.
The work will be included in the museum's non-fungible tokens (NFT) collection of 24 Schiele paintings and drawings, which was created in collaboration with LaCollection, a new NFT platform dedicated to museum collections. Funds from the NFT collection will be used to restore the painting and expand the museum's Schiele collection. Schiele is regarded as one of the most influential and colorful figures of Viennese modernism, having created a groundbreaking body of work prior to his death from influenza at the age of 28 during the 1918 pandemic.
Rudolf Leopold, the founder of the Leopold Museum, was a major patron of Schiele's work and is widely credited with launching his career. Schiele painted Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano shortly before his 17th birthday. It has an impressionist style and a muted palette, which is typical of his early work. Czihaczek became Schiele's legal guardian after the artist's father died when he was 15 years old. In the painting, he is depicted as a bourgeois figure and a man of culture, an ode to the role he was to play in the young artist's life.
"The painting depicts Egon Schiele's uncle and legal guardian, Leopold Czihaczek (1842-1929), playing the piano in his apartment in Vienna's Leopoldstadt district," said Verena Gamper of the Leopold Museum Research Center. "After Egon's father, Adolf Schiele, died unexpectedly, Czihaczek took over Schiele's guardianship." Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano, can be found in Rudolf Leopold's 1972 catalogue raisonné. According to Gamper, it was previously known only from preliminary studies and a black and white photograph from 1930 of a room in which it hung.
Photo: © Leopold Museum, Vienna.
"Since then, there had been no evidence as to whether the painting still existed or had been permanently lost," she explained. "It was such a thrilling moment to see this poorly documented and presumably untraceable work materialize when the painting's owners contacted us and I realized what kind of treasure they were talking about."
The NFT collection will focus on themes central to Schiele's work that are still relevant today, such as gender and androgyny, self-identity, and psychological struggle. "As one of the most revered but controversial modern painters for the disturbing intensity and raw sexuality of his painting," the museum said, "the NFTs provide an opportunity to collect works that elicited a strong visceral reaction in viewers when first shown in 1906." Since digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, made history last year by selling an NFT for $69.4 million, NFTs – unique digital assets stored on a blockchain – have captivated the arts sector.
"Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano is a masterpiece of Schiele's early work," said Hans-Peter Wipplinger, director of the Leopold Museum. The current owners have agreed to lend the painting to the Leopold Museum on a permanent basis. "Following cleaning and restoration, we will be able to make it available to the public as part of our permanent exhibition on Vienna 1900 and within the museum's unique collection of Schiele paintings and drawings."
Selena Mattei