LEOPOLD MUSEUM: COMPREHENSIVE VIENNA 1900 EXHIBITION SUPPLEMENTED WITH KOKOSCHKA PRESENTATION

22.07.2019

The largest permanent museum presentation featuring 50 Kokoschka exhibits 

A week after the end of the extensive Kokoschka retrospective, the Leopold Museum now permanently presents the artist Oskar Kokoschka (1886—1980) as part of the successful new presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism.

From 17th July, the museum shows a selection of Kokoschka’s works, chosen by the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger, as an essential part of the new permanent presentation Vienna 1900 curated by him. A total of 16 paintings by Kokoschka, as well as works on paper (drawings, etchings, lithographs), posters, photographs, books and documents, afford insights into the life and oeuvre of this exceptional artist. The presentation includes a glance at Kokoschka’s fellow student, the artist Rudolf Kalvach (1883—1932), who, like Kokoschka, also designed a Poster for the 1908 Kunstschau.

The new Kokoschka presentation comprises some 50 objects, making it the world’s most extensive permanent museum presentation of works by Kokoschka. Alongside works from the Leopold Collection, the exhibition also includes numerous permanent loans. Exhibits from the Leopold Museum were supplemented with loans from the Leopold Private Collection, the Wien Museum, the Austrian National Bank, the collection of the Wiener Städtische Versicherung VIG and with objects from private collections.

The eminent compilation of works can be found on the third floor of the Leopold Museum, prominently embedded between the presentation of interiors by the founder of the Wiener Werkstätte Josef Hoffmann and the pioneer of modern architecture and Kokoschka promoter Adolf Loos as well as the exhibition of the painterly oeuvre of the composer Arnold Schönberg.

“With this new permanent Kokoschka presentation we honor an artist whose eventful biography reflects the light and darkness of Austrian history in the 20th century. Oskar Kokoschka polarized and fascinated in equal measure. The ‘homo politicus’, who was driven by the authoritarian ambitions of his homeland into emigration to the Czech Republic and France, and who was forced by the totalitarian terror of the Nazis, who defamed him as a ‘degenerate artist’, to flee to England, was always committed to the freedom, peace and idea of a united Europe. His unswerving artistic conviction and his humanist work make him stand out as one of the great singular figures of European art and cultural history.”

Hans-Peter Wipplinger, Director of the Leopold Museum

Dubbed a “chief wildling” by the art critic Ludwig Hevesi, the main exponent of Austrian Expressionism was a central representative of Viennese art around 1900. A radical innovator, he was regarded by his contemporaries as an “enfant terrible”. The presentation shows works from all the periods of Kokoschka’s oeuvre, including numerous key works by the artist. The artists’ book written and illustrated by Kokoschka entitled The Dreaming Boys (1907), which he was commissioned to create by the Wiener Werkstätte, marks the transition from Jugendstil to Expressionism. His early Expressionist phase is illustrated by The Cotton Picker, the Poster for the 1908 Kunstschau, the poster for Kokoschka’s play Murderer, the Hope of Women (1909) with the famous pietà motif, as well as the Self-Portrait as a Man of Sorrows in the version as an advertising poster for the Berlin magazine Der Sturm (1910) and as a poster announcing his lecture On the Nature of Visions held at the Academic Association for Literature and Music (1911).

The Dolomite landscape Tre Croci, created during his liaison with Alma Mahler in 1913, and the Self-Portrait, One Hand Touching the Face (1918/19), executed after the end of World War I, are shown alongside the portraits of the lawyer Hermann Schwarzwald (1916) and the composer Arnold Schönberg (1924). An extraordinary loan is the more than 4-meter-wide mural created for Alma Mahler’s villa on the Semmering, while the Self-Portrait at the Easel (1922) is a chief example of the colorful painting from his Dresden period. Cityscapes, like the veduta Amsterdam (1925) or the view of the municipal children’s home in Schloss Wilhelminenberg (1931), feature in the exhibition as well as the allegorical depiction Annexation – Alice in Wonderland (1942), created in England during his period of emigration.

The exhibition Oskar Kokoschka. Expressionist, Migrant, European (6th April – 8th July 2019) at the Leopold Museum was attended by some 120,000 art enthusiasts. The eminent painters of Viennese Modernism Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka are among the protagonists of the Vienna Secession and are often referred to as the triad of “Klimt — Schiele – Kokoschka”. Another innovator of Viennese Modernism was the pioneer of Austrian Expressionism Richard Gerstl. The rooms previously dedicated to Gerstl’s oeuvre since the opening of the Vienna 1900 exhibition on 15th March will now be taken over by Kokoschka. Richard Gerstl’s paintings will soon be on display again in the special exhibition Richard Gerstl. Inspiration. Legacy, which opens on 27th September. The first presentation dedicated to the artist’s oeuvre in around 30 years in Austria, it is one of the most comprehensive Gerstl retrospectives ever shown and is presented in a dialogue with other artists.

Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism
Masterpieces from Klimt to Schiele, since 16th March 2019
Masterpieces by Kokoschka, from 17th July 2019

Richard Gerstl. Inspiration – Legacy
27th Sept. 2019 – 20th January 2020
Opening: 26th Sept. 2019, 7 pm
Press conference: 26th Sept. 2019, 9.30 am
 

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