‘Kokoschka was always markedly and personally present in his drawings. The same can be said of others. The crucial difference is that he was always human. Even in his fleeting studies, the most rapidly sketched nudes from his Viennese period he was never cool or indifferent and one is always moved by his line …’
This was the assessment of the Berlin gallerist Victor Wallerstein in 1921, as he looked back on the work of the thirty-fiveyear- old Oskar Kokoschka.
Kokoschka’s artistic career started off with drawing. From 1904 to 1906, in the first two years of his studies in the ‘general department’ at the Kunstgewerbeschule (today Vienna’s University of Applied Arts), his drawings still reflect the rigours of the curriculum for ornamental and figural drawing. As his second year drew to a close and the third year began (1907), Kokoschka broke away from academic strictures with astonishing rapidity and developed his own ‘visual language’ as a means of expressing himself. He drew many nudes and semi nudes with a focus on rapidly capturing gesture and movement in space. The poses and movements of his models are precisely rendered in sparing lines and he conveyed a sense of depth with touches of watercolour. In this way Kokoschka captured his intensive experience of the moment in constant variations.

Johann Winkler

Literature: Alice Strobl, Alfred Weidinger: Oskar Kokoschka. Die Zeichnungen und Aquarelle. 1897 – 1916. Verlag Galerie Welz. Salzburg 2008.