Product Description

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) is one of Austria's finest Expressionist artists. His paintings are renowned and admired for their vivid colour and restless energy. This book focuses on the early portraits that Kokoschka painted in Vienna and Berlin on the eve of World War I. Perhaps the best known and most highly esteemed of all his works, these portraits are examples of Kokoschka's use of ecaggeration and distortion of colour to convey deep emotioni and psychological tension. they also present a look at many of the important intellectual figures of the era, for their subjects include Peter Altenbery, Adolf Loos, Alma Mahler and Kokoschka himself (in his "Self Portrait as Knight Errant"). This illustrated book includes not only these oil portraits but also some of Kokoschka's drawings of the same sitters and a selection of the postcards, fans and posters he made for the Wiener Werkstatte in the period before the portraits were completed, all of which shed light on his early development. There are also discussions on the culture and history of Vienna and Berlin in the pre-war period; Kokoschka's shift from Art Nouveau to Expressionism; his place within the German and Austrian Expressionist movements; his reception in the United States; and more. This book is the catalogue for a major exhibition that opens at the Neue galerie, New York on 15th March 2002 and runs until 10th June. The show then travels to the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany from 4th July to 29th September 2002.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1192244 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Library Journal
Expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) came of age in "the banquet years" of fin-de-siŠcle Vienna amid a morbidly self-conscious circle of poets, architects, and intellectuals. After seeing Van Gogh's self-portraits in 1906, he propelled his own style into an emotionally lucid intensity rivaling that of the bipolar Dutchman. This catalog to an exhibition that ran in New York City and Hamburg, Germany, concentrates on Kokoschka's most important body of work, the portraits that marked his departure from the more controlled art nouveau Jugenstil and placed him at the vanguard of early modernism. Showcased are 88 deeply neurotic early canvases, which contemporary wags claimed revealed the sitter's soul within their electric outlines and scoured pigments. Readers who skip several unwieldy essays that dwell meticulously on the most recondite interpretations of Kokoschka's art will be rewarded with an essentially strong treatment of the most expressive painter between Van Gogh and Max Beckmann. Far more apposite are the essays describing Vienna's sociopolitical milieu and the short pieces of writing that background each of the individual works-themselves carefully shown in large-scale color plates. Edited by Austrian National Gallery curator Natter, this is the best title currently available on an artist who influenced many later generations of modernists and is thus recommended for all libraries.
Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
This large exhibition catalog is a sumptuously rich document...Most highly recommended. -- Choice

About the Author
Tobias G. Natter is Keeper of the Twentieth-Century Collection of the Austrian National Gallery Vienna and a frequent guest curator for the Jewish Museum Vienna. He is the coeditor of Klimt's Women (ISBN 0 300 08796 9, [pound]35.00*), published by Yale University Press.