Vienna secession kokoshka
Vienna secession kokoshka series#
But she had already gone out of my life by the time it appeared.” Ī series of nude studies of Lang by Kokoschka made during this period, show strong similarities to the illustrations in the book. In his autobiography, Kokoschka describes her as often wearing a red-peasant-weave skirt “Red was my favorite color and the book was my first love letter. The girl in the story was in fact a Swedish girl named Lillith Lang, a few years his junior at the Kunstgewerbeschule and whom Kokoschka was romantically involved with. The prose-poem was accompanied by eight colour lithographs that, with the exception of the first four, don’t seem to correspond to the text.įrom what we know about this period of his life, Kokoschka seems to reflect on his own state of mind at the time, placing himself as the character of the boy. As the story progresses, the text of the book becomes both inaccessible and inappropriate for children not only on account of its style, but also because of its references to rape and self-mutilation. The poem combines symbolist poetry-style of the late 19 th century with traditional verse forms of German folk-poems. In the subsequent pages, there follows a stream-of conscious narrative style prose chronicling the story of a young boy and a heroine named Li in a fantastical lost bird-forest of the north. Initially the commission was to create a children’s picture book printed but Kokoschka claimed to have followed the brief only as far as the first page. The Garden of Dreaming Youths was Kokoschka’s first large commission by the Wiener Werkstätte at the recommendation of Czeschka in late 1907.
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Artists involved in this product included Mela Koehler, Maria Likarz-Strauss, Rudolf Kalvach and of course, Kokoschka who in addition to postcard designs, produced flower paintings, narrative cameos and landscape scenes. The company had by then regularly employed teachers and students particularly those enrolled in Czeschka’s classes, to create designs for the company’s postcards. Warendorfer was a strong supporter of the progressive ideas of the Vienna Secession and acquainted with some of its members like Carl Otto Czeschka, Koloman Moser and Frank Myrbach who were teaching at the Kunstgewerbeschule. It’s progressive and wealthy director Fritz Warendorfer was once described by writer and actor Egon Friedell as “an intelligent gentlemen with a great deal of money and taste- two things we all know practically never come together”. Kokoschka was a twenty-one year old student at the Kunstgewerbeschule (Vienna School of Applied Arts) when he was commissioned by the company Wiener Werkstätte to create The Dreaming Youths. The Dreaming Youths is a juxtaposition of opposites, where notions of beauty and the grotesque, love and sexual violence, and reality and the subconscious are constantly blurred. In addition, the book provides an insight into Kokoschka’s psychology and his pre-occupation with trying to express Eros and death through art and poetry.
![vienna secession kokoshka vienna secession kokoshka](http://www.theviennasecession.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/AUCHENTALLER-ZEICHNUNGEN-15.jpg)
![vienna secession kokoshka vienna secession kokoshka](http://fyldedfas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/soy1vm-750x495.jpg)
It also reflects a young and insecure Kokoschka who, not having found his place or unique style, was borrowing from the eclectic styles that were prevalent in early 20 thcentury Vienna. Of all of Kokoschka’s works, historians regard his illustrated book Die träumenden Knaben (The Dreaming Youths) as an important work that best shows the transition from Jugendstil to Expressionism. The true father of Expressionism in Austria was in fact the young and timid painter Richard Gerstle, but because of his early death from suicide and the relatively small body of work he left behind, the title is often given to Kokoschka instead.
![vienna secession kokoshka vienna secession kokoshka](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/69/b2/8b/69b28b94cf299f20b8dd31a40cba6df5.jpg)
Oscar Kokoschka is credited as being the artist who broke with the Jugendstil style–Austria’s equivalent of Art Nouveau– to create Austrian Expression.