The Arrest of Egon Schiele
A hundred drawings seized, and one burned in court
Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
In 1912 Egon Schiele was arrested and jailed in Austria; authorities seized more than a hundred of his erotic drawings as obscene, and a judge reportedly burned one over a candle flame in the courtroom.
Schiele's unflinching nudes, and the presence of local children in his studio, led to charges that combined moral panic with genuine legal jeopardy. The graver accusations were dropped, but he was convicted of displaying erotic drawings where minors could see them and spent time in jail awaiting trial.
The image of a judge burning a drawing has become a founding parable of artistic censorship. Schiele died six years later at 28, but the seized works and the trial cemented his status as a martyr-figure of modern art's confrontation with the law.