Dead City III

Dead City III of 1911, oil on panel, is the third iteration in Schiele's celebrated Dead City series depicting Český Krumlov. By the third version, the compositional approach is firmly established: the aerial viewpoint, the absence of human figures, the sealed mass of buildings pressing against all edges of the support. The panel format for this version concentrates the image's intensity, the hard surface allowing Schiele to build up the paint without the slight absorption of canvas. Dead City III is held by the Leopold Museum alongside many related works, enabling Rudolf Leopold's vision of a comprehensive Schiele collection to document the full sequence of this obsessive series. The 'Dead City' title was Schiele's own designation, reflecting his perception of Krumlov as a place haunted by its past — geographically beautiful but psychologically stifling, a physical embodiment of the hereditary weight he associated with his mother's origins.

Oil on panel with a rich, dense surface in the building areas contrasting with thinner, more transparent treatment in the water reflections at the composition's lower edge. The high viewpoint compresses the townscape into a map-like arrangement of interlocking colour forms.