Description
The Self Seers (Death and Man) turns a likeness into an encounter with a second, shadowy presence. A dark principal face appears toward the right, with a ghostly head rising at the upper left and a pale hand entering the foreground. Brown and ochre tones bind the figures to the surrounding field. Egon Schiele makes their proximity unsettling, interrupting the idea of a self-portrait as one stable, indivisible identity.
Painted in 1911 in oil on canvas, the work is known in the Leopold Museum as Self-Seers II. The museum interprets the doubled figure as part of Schiele’s exploration of heightened self-awareness and inward crisis. That reading belongs to the painting’s particular arrangement, where an introspective face, a returning presence and disconnected bodily detail make the portrait feel less like a fixed likeness than an image of divided perception.
Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Egon Schiele collection.
