April Gornik Offers Insight Into Egon Schiele’s Landscapes

On Saturday, December 21, at 4 p.m., artist April Gornik offers an encore presentation at The Church in Sag Harbor of her recent talk about the landscapes of Egon Schiele, which she presented at the Neue Galerie in New York City last month. The lecture includes images and insights into landscape painting as a contemplation of nature and the landscape at large. Gornik will focus on both Schiele’s contemporary context and the artists he may be likened to in more recent context in the decades following his untimely death.

Schiele was an Austrian artist, born in 1890. Though he lived only to the age of 28, his highly expressive drawings and paintings captured the essence of new ideas in form and content of art and are considered defining works of the Austrian Expressionism movement. His focus on landscape was less prolific and is lesser known than his figurative work, yet through his writings and poetry, it is clear that nature was as important to him as humanity. In his poem “Kunstler” (“Artist”), he wrote “The highest sentiment is religion and art. Nature is purpose, but God is there, and I sense him powerfully, very powerfully, most powerfully.”

Schiele’s work is on view in an exhibition running through January 13 at Neue Galerie, a museum devoted to Austrian and German art and design of the 20th century located on the Upper East Side.

Tickets to the talk are $10 ($5 members) at thechurchsagharbor.org. The Church is at 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor.