Autograph annotations, emendations and cancellations on a partial typed transcript of a conversation between Kokoschka and Ludwig Goldscheider.

Kokoschka, Oskar, Austrian artist (1886-1980).

Verlag: No place, [1962].

Beschreibung

In German. Four marginal annotations and a number of cancellations and interlinear annotations, the typescript on 7 pages, 330 x 203mm, numbered 15 - 21, a few annotations in another hand (perhaps Goldscheider's). Kokoschka on his art and life, including his relationship with Alma Mahler. In these passages from his conversation with Goldscheider, Kokoschka discusses his portraits (mentioning the famous portrait of Karl Kraus) and landscapes, comparing his portraits to the use of masks in Greek tragedy. He discusses his early struggles, his relationships with Lotte Franzos and, at length, Alma Mahler, and his exile from Austria after the Anschluss; the conversation ends with Kokoschka's ringing condemnation of non-representational art. At times the alterations are merely refinements of language, as when he changes his characterisation of his portrait of Lotte Franzos from "ein Oval aus starkem Dunkelblau" to "eine Aura aus starkem Dunkelblau". At the foot of p.16 he significantly modifies a description of his early material difficulties to add a reference to the support he received from his parents, elaborated in an eight-line addition at the foot of the page; a further marginal annotation on p.17 notes that the studio in which he met Alma Mahler had been rented for him by his mother. He amends lower on the same page his account of the end of his relationship with Alma Mahler, and at the foot of p.18 cancels five lines relating to her. An extended annotation in the margin of p.20 pays tribute to his sister and her struggles in Communist Czechoslovakia. In an initial autograph note at the top of p.15 to Goldscheider, Kokoschka asks him to "excuse these small alterations and corrections, these in order to remain grateful and fair to my dear parents". - The conversation with the publisher and art historian Ludwig Goldscheider, which took place in Villeneuve in 1962, was the basis of Goldscheider's study of the artist published by his Phaidon Press in 1963. - Provenance: Sotheby's, 29 November 1985, lot 337. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 63272

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Autograph annotations, emendations and ...

Verlag: No place, [1962].