Windsbraut book
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Christian Hain
There are many ways to write a biography, and different reasons for reading one. At the beginning of his comprehensive work on Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), Rüdiger Görner, German professor at London University, touches upon the difficulties in painting any ‘true’ portrait in written form, or for that matter a ‘painted’ one. Kokoschka himself admitted that his autobiography “contained part real, part imaginary events and anecdotes” – but then again, whose life doesn’t? It won’t diminish the book’s artistic merits, nor tarnish its ‘truthfulness’ in a literary sense. The artist, by the way, might have chosen the title Mein Leben (My Life) to indirectly quote – and contradict – a certain other book infamously called Mein Kampf (My Fight/Struggle). Kokoschka, we learn, felt guilty for entering Vienna’s School of Decorative Arts in the same year that the other candidate was rejected who subsequently chose the career path of murderous tyrant. But today, we shall be concerned with Rüdiger Görner, and his characterisation of the artist as an “Untimel
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Anonymous, Oskar Kokoschka à l’Ecole du regard, Salzburg, ca. 1953, © Vevey, Fondation Oskar Kokoschka
BIOGRAPHY
1886–1909
Youth and apprenticeship
Oskar Kokoschka is born on 1 March 1886 in Pöchlarn (Lower Austria) on the banks of the Danube. He is the second child of Gustav Kokoschka, a travelling salesman descended from a family of goldsmiths in Prague, and Maria Romana, née Loidl, the daughter of a forester from the Alpine foothills of Styria. Oskar’s childhood is spent in Vienna.
In 1904 he enrols in the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna. His first oil paintings date from 1905/06. While still a student, he is commissioned by the Wiener Werkstätte to design some postcards. Employing a decorative style from which he will later distance himself, Kokoschka depicts motifs with flat areas of vibrant, contrasting colour. At the same time, he writes a number of prose poems, dramas and plays. Die träumenden Knaben (‘The Dreaming Boys’), published in 1908, immediately attracts the attention of his peers and is a stylistic milestone in the emergence of
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The Bride of the Wind
Painting by Oskar Kokoschka
For the film derived from the life of Alma Mahler, see Bride of the Wind.
| The Bride of the Wind | |
|---|---|
| Artist | Oskar Kokoschka |
| Year | 1913–1914 |
| Medium | oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 181 cm × 220 cm (71 in × 87 in) |
| Location | Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland |
The Bride of the Wind (Die Windsbraut), also called The Tempest, is a 1913–1914 painting by Oskar Kokoschka. The oil on canvas work is housed in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Kokoschka's best known work, it is an allegorical picture featuring a self-portrait by the artist, lying alongside his lover Alma Mahler.
In 1912, Kokoschka first met Alma Mahler, the recently widowed wife of composer Gustav Mahler. A passionate romance ensued, with the artist producing numerous drawings and paintings of his muse. The painting depicts Alma in a peaceful sleep beside Kokoschka, who is awake and stares into space. The couple's break-up in 1914 had a profound effect on Kokoschka, whose expressive brushwork grew more turbulent.
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