Nude with Back Turned (In den Hüften nach links gedrehter weiblicher Rückenakt) (recto); Untitled (verso)

1908

A scandalous debut at the Vienna Kunstschau

In 1908 Kokoschka was invited to submit works to the first Vienna Kunstschau. Instead of the colour pictures for a children’s book commissioned by Fritz Wärndorfer, director of the Wiener Werkstätte, he showed illustrations to his own poem “Die träumenden Knaben” and a tapestry, “The Dream Bearers” (now lost); the frank adolescent fantasies provoked a backlash from conservative officials and he was expelled from the school, but found his place in the Viennese avant-garde.

1908

The book “Die träumenden Knaben” with lithographs

Kokoschka published the poem, written a year earlier, with the Wiener Werkstätte, with two small black-and-white and eight larger colour lithographs, and dedicated it to Gustav Klimt. Of the five hundred copies only a small proportion were bound and sold; the poem is an autobiographical adolescent fantasy about his love for a Swedish classmate, Lilith.

1909

The scandalous staging of “Murderer, the Hope of Women”

Kokoschka’s play “Murderer, the Hope of Women” was first staged in 1909, and the production on a Viennese stage caused a scandal. The play is often called the first Expressionist drama; Paul Hindemith made an opera of it in 1921.

1909–1914

Adolf Loos: patron and commissioner of portraits

The architect Adolf Loos befriended Kokoschka, introduced him to the Viennese avant-garde and ordered portraits of his clients and friends, agreeing to buy the work if the sitter declined. This left Kokoschka complete artistic freedom; he painted the bulk of his portraiture between 1909 and 1914.

1910

Berlin: Cassirer and Walden

In 1910 Kokoschka moved to Berlin. The art dealer Paul Cassirer saw promise in his work and launched him into the international circle, and the publisher and critic Herwarth Walden, introduced to him by Loos, employed him as an illustrator for his magazine “Der Sturm”; over the next four years Kokoschka travelled back and forth between Vienna and Berlin.

c. 1911 – 1914

The affair with Alma Mahler

Kokoschka’s stormy affair with Alma Mahler, the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler, lasted about two years: she was afraid of being overcome by passion and rejected him, and in 1915 she married Walter Gropius. Kokoschka loved her all his life.