In 1908 Egon Schiele - then a restless art student - first encountered the work of Gustav Klimt at the Viennese Kunstschau. Towards the end of 1910, the two men met and began a mutual exchange of ideas and drawings, which would continue until their deaths in 1918.

This volume, accompanying the remarkable exhibition at the Royal Academy opening this November, considers Klimt and Schiele in their capacity as outstanding draughtsmen, illustrated with over a hundred drawings from the Albertina Museum, Vienna. These erotic, intriguing and sometimes disturbing works electrified early 20th-century Vienna, reveal new comparisons between these two giants of Austrian Modernism and still have the power to shock and enthral to this day.

With over 120 colour illustrations accompanied by text from writers including Marian Bisanz-Prakken, the leading expert on Klimt's drawings and a former curator at the Albertina Museum; Désirée de Chair, Curator of Klimt / Schiele: Drawings from the Albertina Museum, Vienna at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Elizabeth Clegg, an independent scholar who has published widely on the visual arts in 19th- and 20th-century Central Europe; and Jane Kallir, Senior Curator at the Galerie St Etienne, New York, and author of Schiele's catalogue raisonné.