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Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980)
painter & Alma´s lover
Listen to Oskar Kokoschka's voice:
Alma
Mahler and Wagner's Tristan (2,8 MB)
World
War 1 (7 MB)
About
his life (1,6 MB)
Berlin
in the 1920s (1,1 MB)
About
the Puppet (0,4 MB)
In 1912 Alma met the young painter Oskar Kokoschka, who was
known as the enfant terrible of the Viennese art scene. He
was violent and unbridled, and the press derided him as »the
wildest beast of all«. The acquaintanceship led on to
an unrestrained amour fou, an intensive sexual relationship
interrupted only during those hours when Alma posed as a model
for her loved one. When he was not loving her, he painted
her. Kokoschka´s consuming passion was soon transformed
into subjugation, and his jealousy into obsession. Kokoschka´s
mother rushed to her son´s assistance and wrote to Alma:
»If you see Oskar again, I´ll shoot you dead!«
Kokoschka´s most famous painting, »The Bride of
the Wind«, testifies to this anguished time. When Alma
became pregnant by him but had the child aborted, she caused
him such a blow that he was never able to recover from it.
She sealed his physical downfall by sending him to the front
as a volunteer, where he received a serious bayonet injury
in russia, in 1915.
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above:
The notorious Alma doll, a life-size
copy of Alma
left: Oskar Kokoschka |
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But the news of Alma´s marriage to Walter Gropius hurt
him still more. In deepest desperation, he ordered a life-size
doll from a doll-maker in Munich which should resemble Alma
in every detail, and he thought it would help him console himself
for the loss of his loved one. Not surprisingly, the result
was disappointing: a clumsy construction of fabric and wood-wool,
which Kokoschka had beheaded at a wild, orgiastic party in his
atelier in Dresden, in 1919. And so he separated himself from
the curse of his life, Alma, in effigy form. |
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