Kokoschka and Alma Mahler: Testimony to a Passionate Relationship

by Alfred Weidinger, Fiona Elliott (Translator), Jacqueline Guigui-Stolberg (Editor)

This text explores the passionate relationship between Oskar Kokoschka and Alma Mahler. Kokoschka was born in Austria in 1886. He was influenced by the works of Gustav Klimt and medieval artists such as Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Durer, and painted many notable paintings in a distinctive Expressionist style in his early career. However, it was his relationship with Mahler that greatly influenced his work. Kokoschka first met Alma Mahler on 1912, eleven months after the death of her husband. Three days after meeting, Kokoschka proposed to her in a passionate letter and they embarked on a stormy relationship which was to last only three years. The 20 paintings (including the "Bride of the Winds"), 70 drawings and prints (including "Alma Mahler") and 7 fans that bear witness to this relationship are discussed. Previously unpublished material including Alma Mahler's diary from 1912-13 is used to complete the picture of this extraordinary relationship.

Genres: Art History

122 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

Reviews

[sürəyya · Rating 4 out of 5]

“On the sofa in Kokoschka’s living room, between the side wall and the long wall, behind the round table, there it sat- life-size, shimmering white, crowned with chestnut brown hair, a blue jacket round its shoulders: the doll, the fetish, the artificial woman, the ideal woman, the ideal model.”
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“No young god could feel greater happiness than I do now. Had I but an immense load to carry- what joy to cast it aside as you approach, you my only true love and eternal darling”
Oskar Kokoschka

[Arwen Downs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an impulse buy at the Harvard Bookstore (oh Harvard Bookstore, I love you so-) and then I started it while on the bus to see a Kokoschka show at the Neue Gallery in NY (my new favorite museum - because it is a museum.) Perfect timing.

It is strange, though. This is a book that writes almost scientifically about a "passionate relationship." There are well-chosen quotations from letters between Kokoschka and Mahler, as well as fantastic and detailed analyses of Kokoschka's paintings exhibiting the devotion he had for her and the borderline ambivalent love she felt for him.

So. . . while I am eating up the historical breakdown of Mahler-centered portion of Kokoschka's career, it doesn't seem fair to people who want a romance to sell the book as such. The romantic part is quite depressing, actually. Of course, I haven't finished. Maybe they work it out in the end and he gets less co-dependent and she throws him a bone.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand Kokoschka better now. Also understand how suffocated Alma would have been had she married him, but I got a very clear picture of that from her biography.
Really like the book's layout and printing adjacently K's work and other artists' work which influenced it.