Oct 09, 2002 - Sale 1945

Sale 1945 - Lot 56

Price Realized: $ 11,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
OSKAR KOKOSCHKA (1886-1980) VORTRAG O. KOKOSCHKA. 1912.
37 1/4x24 3/4 inches. [A. Berger]
Condition B-: paper loss in bottom left corner, affecting text; tears, creases and minor soiling in lower right margin; minor losses in image. Paper. Blue-pencil "13" in right margin. Signed and dated by the artist in pen. Color and image excellent.
A student of the Art Nouveau era who exhibited with Gustav Klimt, Kokoschka became one of the great expressionist artists of the 20th century. In 1908 he exhibited at the Kunstschau in Vienna to which the critics commented that his work was violent (in fact one referred to Kokoschka himself as an Oberwilding<>--a "super savage!). In response Kokoschka decided to appear to the critics as they viewed him, and he shaved his head. This poster is a self-portrait and is nearly identical to a poster he created in 1910 for Der Sturm<> magazine. It shows the artist with a bald head and a bleeding wound in his side (the wound supposedly a reference to the abusive treatment he received from the Viennese when he premiered his expressionist play Morder Hoffnung der Frauen<> [Murder Hope of Women]). The poster was issued to advertise a lecture which Kokoschka was giving called Von der Natur der Gesichte<> (On the Nature of Visions), in which he "emphatically declared the essentials of his artistic and didactic concepts" (Kokoschka p. 77) and which "contained his most detailed comments on his approach to portraiture" (www.neuegalerie.org/neue.html). According to the catalogue raisonne the poster for Der Sturm<> was "transferred to the stones by someone else's hand" (Kokoschka p. 75) but that this poster was "drawn onto the stone by the artist himself" (ibid). Kokoschka's personal involvement with this printing and with the event led him to hand sign and date a few "collector's copies". No other known copies are numbered. A very rare and important poster. Kokoschka 33, Denscher p. 93.
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