In around 1940, Oskar Kokoschka started painting floral still lifes in watercolour while in exile in London. As we find out from his biography, his interest in this harmless motif was a way of expressing hope for the future. Flowers, which blossom each year with new and colourful splendour, signalized the overcoming of the war’s suffering and the triumph of an unfailing vital energy. This delight in living nature and her creations was to remain one of the most important driving forces for Kokoschka’s art thereafter. When, in 1953, the artist settled at Villeneuve on Lake Geneva, his large garden became both his favourite place to work and a source of inspiration in its own right. Lovingly, he planted and tended to an array of flowers which then ‘modelled’ for him in the many still lifes that featured constantly in his repertoire in the next two decades. The term ‘still life’ is in fact not really apt, as these paintings are certainly not about ‘dead nature’ – nature morte, to use the term of Romance languages. On the contrary, these flowers are the very essence and symbol of vitality. Kokoschka does not amass artificial arrangements to demonstrate his artistic prowess. With light, fluent strokes he places the flowers on an empty background so that, floating freely in space, they seem to softly vibrate. It is not the microscopic, detailed realism that guides his hand but his intuitive understanding of the vital essence of his motifs.

Edwin Lachnit

Literatur: Musée Jensich, Vevey (Hrsg.): Werke der Oskar-Kokoschka-Stiftung. Vevey 1994. vgl. Farbabb. S. 203.