Oskar Kokoschka * Lot n° 12

(Pöchlarn 1886–1980 Villeneuve) Mädchen mit bloßen Füßen / Girl with bare feet, around 1922, signed Oskar Kokoschka, gouache and watercolour on paper, 69.3 x 51.2 cm, framed Provenance: Collection of Sam J. Levin (1903–1976) and Audrey Loew Levin (1914–1991), St. Louis, USA their sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 25 February 1992, lot 35 Private Collection, London Registered: The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Dr. Alfred Weidinger and it will be included in the second volume of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné. “For it cannot be overlooked that what gives these sheets their inner dimension is the great conception that a visionary man projects into things and people.” (Paul Westheim, Oskar Kokoschka, Potsdam-Berlin 1918) When Oskar Kokoschka received a professorship at the Academy in Dresden in 1919, he began a period of personal and artistic peace. He was able to come to terms with the tremendous emotional charge of his Viennese years, intensified by his unhappy love affair with Anna Mahler-Werfel and the traumatic experiences of the war, and was able to reorient himself. He began working with a less expressive but rhythmic use of colour, as well as a more direct but no less intense understanding of the human psyche. This is particularly evident in the portraits of girls that Kokoschka executed primarily in watercolour between 1920 and 1923. They represent “a peak in Kokoschka’s art” and are special testimonies to his expressive language. The form grows entirely from dynamic, gesturally applied spots of colour, which are “so pondered that both movement and stillness are expressed in them.” (Rupert Feuchtmüller, in: Oskar Kokoschka, Ausstellung zum 100. Josef Dobrowsky, Galerie Würthle, Vienna 1986, cat. no. 49) A particularly beautiful example of the almost somnambulistic certainty of his painting is represented by this image of a sitting girl. From powerful, short brushstrokes, the figure builds up in a closed form, her bare feet hanging from the edge and the absence of hands, disappearing somewhere shyly in the robe, are particularly telling. Ultimately, it is the eyes that captivate the viewer: blue luminous dots, curious, proud and yet inviting at the same time.