Colored wax crayons on paper
England, 1949
Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) – Austrian Painter and Illustrator
Monogrammed with dedication lower right "’or our beloved B... a little token from OK 1951’
Authenticity confirmed by Dr. Alfred Weidinger; the drawing will be included in the third volume of his forthcoming Oskar Kokoschka catalogue raisonné
Sheet size: 35 x 25.4 cm
Good condition
Provenance: formerly private collection Georges Briard (1917-2005); afterwards private collection, United Kingdom
Dynamic sketch from Kokoschka’s later oeuvre; the auction record for a similar drawing from this period is set at over €12,000

The present work from 1949 is one of Oskar Kokoschka’s typical quick drawings of a female nude. It was created when Kokoschka lived in England, where he had settled after his escape from the Nazis after 1938. In the 1940s to 60s, the artist created a series of crayon drawings of this kind. The incomplete contours of the figure are put to paper with brisk strokes. With only a few broken, colored lines Kokoschka managed to render the female form in a distorted pose.



The work is monogrammed with a dedication and dating lower right ‘for our beloved B... a little token from OK 1951’. The sheet is mounted at the edges on a mat backing. It is light-stained and mat-stained. There are several notches of paper loss along the edges, the tip of the upper left corner is torn. There is a repaired tear (25 mm) emanating from the upper edge and two faint water stains near the center of the lower edge of the sheet. A white gouache-like medium is painted along the upper edge with scattered spots throughout the figure that fluoresces under UV-light inspection. It is unclear whether this was applied by the artist or later. The sheet size is 35 x 25.4 cm. The frame work measures 50.5 x 41.5 cm.



Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980)

Kokoschka was born in Pöchlarn but grew up in Vienna. Thanks to the intercession of Carl Otto Czeschka (1878-1960), Kokoschka was allowed to study at the arts school where he stayed from 1905 until 1909. He moved to Berlin in 1910 where he illustrated the expressionist magazine Der Sturm and had a huge exhibition in Paul Cassirer’s gallery. Back in Vienna, he met Alma Mahler, yet when their tumultuous affair ended, Kokoschka voluntarily joined the military service. He got injured and spent the rest of the war as a war painter. He was named a professor in Dresden in 1919 and stayed there until 1924. With the beginning of the Nazi regime, Kokoschka had to flee to Prague after he was named, „The most degenerated amongst the degenerated“, and, “Hitler’s artistic enemy No. 1”. TheOskar Kokoschka Bund was founded in Prague with the aim of contradicting the ‘artistic’ machinations of the National Socialists and to support Kokoschka. In 1938, Kokoschka fled to England and became a British citizen in 1946 (he only re-accepted the Austrian citizenship in 1975). He founded the Schule des Sehens, an international fine arts summer academy in Salzburg and moved to Switzerland in 1953. Kokoschka participated in the documenta I, II and III and received many honors and awards. Regular exhibitions are held in his birthplace in Pöchlarn. Paintings by Kokoschka are today in the most important museums for modern art in Austria and Germany, but also in the National Gallery of Scotland and the National Gallery in Prague as well as in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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