Two Squatting Women

'Two Squatting Women' from 1918 belongs to Schiele's final year — he died in October 1918 from the Spanish influenza pandemic, aged twenty-eight, three days after his pregnant wife Edith. The work thus belongs to what turned out to be his farewell body of work, painted during a period when Schiele had achieved significant recognition, following his celebrated room at the 1918 Vienna Secession exhibition. The two female figures demonstrate his evolved command of the human body in compressed, angular positions. Throughout his career Schiele was drawn to awkward, unstable poses — figures squatting, crouching, embracing — that conventional academic portraiture avoided entirely. These positions convey vulnerability, physical self-awareness, and a kind of animal unselfconsciousness that Schiele found more honest than the idealised poses of academic tradition. By 1918 his line had lost some of the feverish anxiety of the early work and gained greater assurance, though without sacrificing intensity. The female figure remained central to his vision throughout: he painted women as beings of independent inner life, not as symbols of male desire, even when depicting erotically charged subjects. The Leopold Museum holds this work as part of its comprehensive Schiele collection, which constitutes the world's most important holding of his oils and works on paper.

Oil on canvas executed with the controlled confidence of Schiele's mature period. Contour lines remain defining elements of the composition but now work in fuller dialogue with tonal modelling. The palette balances warm flesh tones against cooler ground colours, with drapery providing structural anchoring to the otherwise unstable poses.