This superb collection of the Viennese Expressionist Egon Schiele’s drawings of women—pencil and charcoal with touches of watercolor and gouache—offered more than sufficient evidence that the artist stands as one of the 20th century’s great draftsmen.

It also explored his tormented feelings about the opposite sex. From the conventional portraits of his mother that Schiele (1890–1918) composed when he was 17, to his studies of street children and prostitutes a few years later, to his final drawings of his wife, his fascination with females never stopped.

At 20 Schiele was already creating astonishing work. His line was sure; his compositions were audacious. His images of children are so unsettling they can trigger goose bumps. In one, a skinny, Pippi Longstocking-style girl kneels and pulls her dress up with her teeth so as to reveal her wares. In another, the girl, stark naked, looks straight at the artist and smiles. With their tousled hair and flame-red genitals, Schiele’s teenagers of 1910 are like mangy dogs in heat. Partly projections of the artist, they seem disturbingly realistic nonetheless.

Drawn just a few years later, his nudes portraying twenty-something women are more like lewd panthers ready to pounce. The figures are muscular, the faces opaque as masks. By then, just a few years later, he’d added portraits to his repertoire, and these include the gorgeous line drawings of his lover Wally (1913) and of his wife, Edith (1915).

But, for the most part, Schiele remained fixated on transgressive sex. The black shoes, the garters, the purple stockings show up on woman after woman, many of whom were asked to spread their legs. Schiele even roped his sister-in-law into the act. The miracle is he turned these obsessions into art.

This review of the show at Galerie St. Etienne in NYC originally appeared in ARTNews, February 2013.