The story
Welcome to the heart of Český Krumlov, standing before the heavy stone walls of Široká 71. Today, this massive Renaissance-era brewery houses the Egon Schiele Art Centrum, a world-renowned space that breathes with the legacy of one of the 20th century’s most provocative and haunting geniuses. But if you had been standing in this very spot in the summer of 1911, you wouldn't have found a celebrated gallery.
Instead, you would have felt the palpable tension of a town at war with a young man. Egon Schiele was only twenty-one years old when he arrived in Krumau, as he called it, seeking an escape from the suffocating social pressures of Vienna. This was his mother’s birthplace, a city of red roofs and dark, winding alleys that he described as a dead city of melancholic beauty.
He didn't live in this brewery back then; he settled into a small, wooden garden house on a terrace overlooking the Vltava River, just a short walk from where you are now. He brought with him his seventeen-year-old muse and lover, Wally Neuzil, and a burning desire to capture the raw, unfiltered truth of the human form. But Český Krumlov in 1911 was a deeply traditional and conservative place.
The locals watched with growing horror as adolescent girls from the neighborhood climbed the hill to his studio. Schiele wasn't painting the pretty, idealized portraits the town was used to. He was drawing the human body in states of vulnerability and raw sexuality, using jagged lines and bruised colors.
To the townspeople, his lifestyle was a public scandal and his art was nothing short of pornography. They whispered about the unmarried couple living in sin and the young models posing in the nude. The atmosphere turned toxic.
Neighbors spied through his windows, and local parents were warned to keep their daughters away from the "pervert" on the hill. The breaking point came quickly. After just a few months, the town’s hostility became unbearable.
The very people who should have been proud of their connection to a rising star essentially drove him out, forcing him to pack his canvases and flee back to Austria. It is one of art history’s great ironies. The man they couldn't wait to get rid of is now the reason thousands of people from across the globe flock to this street.
As you step inside the Art Centrum, look for the sketches he made during that brief, tumultuous stay. Notice how he painted the houses of Krumlov—huddled together like living things, vibrant yet decaying. He captured the soul of this town even as its heart was closed to him.
Today, the echoes of his footsteps remain in these cobblestones, a reminder that the artist the world once rejected often becomes the one who defines its history. Take your time here at Široká 71, and as you look at his work, remember the young man who saw beauty where others saw only shame.