Sitzender weiblicher Akt (recto); Stehender männlichter Akt (verso)

By 1914, Schiele's radical and often obsessive exploration of mankind's inner drives - as expressed through the medium of the naked human form - had begun to take on a new and more personal intensity. Where before, the incredibly powerful graphic line and heightened watercolour of Schiele's contorted figures had tended to veer towards distortion in his attempt to give expression to the vital and often overtly sexual inner drives of his sitters, his work from 1914 onwards begins to betray an interest in the psychology of his sitters. In conjunction with this increasing tendency, and perhaps because of it, Schiele's drawings became increasingly painterly with far greater care and attention paid to the nuances and details of his figures whose flesh begins to shimmer and reflect the pulses of life that flows through it.
In this double-sided work which dates from around this period of development in Schiele's art, a loose study of a standing male nude from 1913 forms the back of the work, while on the front, a fully realised and painstakingly-worked figure-study of a woman from 1914 forms a dramatic contrast. Shown crouching in a somewhat defensive pose, this unknown woman stares out of the picture with such an alarming intensity that the burning glare of her eyes seems to infuse her whole emaciated figure with a radiant energy. This sense of an inner energy is complemented and given further emphasis by Schiele's excited use of dry darting splashes of an electrifying ultramarine and a warm orange that accentuate every corner of the girl's angular physique. Such is the mastery displayed in the painterly use of these vibrant colours that the overall effect generated is one in which every part of her body seems to be caught in nervous motion. Only the girl's steady gaze seems to hold this radiating sense of surface motion into a cohesive and understandable unity.