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Lot Essay
'My early black portraits arose in Vienna before the World War: the people lived in security yet they were all afraid. I felt this through their cultivated form of living which was still derived from the Baroque; I painted them in their anxiety and their pain.' (Oskar Kokoschka, quoted in Peter Selz, German Expressionist Painting Berkeley, 1957, p. 165)
Among the most moving, incisive and disturbing of all Twentieth Century portraits, Oskar Kokoschka's early works are extraordinarily powerful and probing psychological paintings that depict an entire culture in decline. Unwelcome revelations of a strange, sick and fragile humanity existing viscerally underneath the skin of outward surface appearance Kokoschka’s early portraits are arguably the very first examples of a truly Expressionist style of portraiture. Eerie and even sometimes prophetic portrayals of how his sitters were to look twenty years later or after an illness, these works display a disturbing existential truth about the nature of modern man. Indeed, so insightful and shocking were they that although they are now highly prized for the acuteness of their perception, they caused dissent and scandal when they were first exhibited.
Collectively, these extraordinary portraits, sometimes known, like Goya's late work, as the 'black portraits' are a series of ghostly almost x-ray-like visions revealing the tortured inner life of their subjects with a psychological precision that seems to visually echo the penetrating insights of fellow explorer of the fin-de-siecle Viennese soul, Sigmund Freud. Kätze of 1910 is a unique animal portrait from this seminal period when Kokoschka was at the height of his visionary powers. The very first of his animal portraits, it was acquired from the artist by his friend and supporter, the architect, Adolf Loos and subsequently became part of Ida Bienert’s collection in Dresden.
Among the most moving, incisive and disturbing of all Twentieth Century portraits, Oskar Kokoschka's early works are extraordinarily powerful and probing psychological paintings that depict an entire culture in decline. Unwelcome revelations of a strange, sick and fragile humanity existing viscerally underneath the skin of outward surface appearance Kokoschka’s early portraits are arguably the very first examples of a truly Expressionist style of portraiture. Eerie and even sometimes prophetic portrayals of how his sitters were to look twenty years later or after an illness, these works display a disturbing existential truth about the nature of modern man. Indeed, so insightful and shocking were they that although they are now highly prized for the acuteness of their perception, they caused dissent and scandal when they were first exhibited.
Collectively, these extraordinary portraits, sometimes known, like Goya's late work, as the 'black portraits' are a series of ghostly almost x-ray-like visions revealing the tortured inner life of their subjects with a psychological precision that seems to visually echo the penetrating insights of fellow explorer of the fin-de-siecle Viennese soul, Sigmund Freud. Kätze of 1910 is a unique animal portrait from this seminal period when Kokoschka was at the height of his visionary powers. The very first of his animal portraits, it was acquired from the artist by his friend and supporter, the architect, Adolf Loos and subsequently became part of Ida Bienert’s collection in Dresden.