Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire –– Minneapolis Institute of Art
Abstract painting of a sawmill surrounded by dark green landscape and distant dark gray mountains
Egon Schiele. Sawmill, 1913. Oil on canvas. Kallir Family Foundation, New York.

Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Timber! Art and Woodwork at the Fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

August 30, 2025 - January 4, 2026
Cargill Gallery
Free Exhibition

This exhibition centers on Egon Schiele’s haunting and rarely seen masterpiece, Sawmill (1913), on loan from a private collection. A mill, located on the boundary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is surrounded by piles of freshly cut timber, but itself seems to be in a process of collapse. The mill can be read as a symbol of the empire, which in 1913 was in a precarious state as its provinces demanded autonomy. The exhibition represents two outcomes for the sawmill’s timber: a wooden bridge in another painting by Schiele and avant-garde wooden furniture, created mostly by Schiele’s friend and mentor, the designer Josef Hoffmann.

Egon Schiele. Sawmill, 1913. Oil on canvas. Kallir Family Foundation, New York.