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Lot Essay
Painted in a series of deft impasto brushstrokes that display Kokoschka's remarkable touch and highly perceptive attention to detail, this portrait is a fine example of Kokoschka's unique ability to capture in paint the character of his sitter. Mädchen mit Blumen also illustrates the relaxed humanity of Kokoschka's images of women. The painting's sun-drenched colors and light atmosphere correspond to the youth and vitality of its subject.
From the middle of the 1920s, the artist's figures became increasingly sculptural and painterly as he was drawn to depicting the heroic in favor of the diminutive and decorative, culminating in powerful expressive forms present in figure compositions such as Mädchen mit Blumen. Despite the light ambience of the work, the model is rendered with an intense brushwork embodying the monumental plastic style which Kokoschka was to develop fully by 1937, the year he painted his famous Selbstbildnis als "entarteter" Künstler (Wingler, no. 311). Of this style, Richard Calvocoressi wrote, "Not the least remarkable aspect...is Kokoschka's brushwork, the superficial untidiness and spontaneity of which conceals a deft, assured touch which unites all the disparate elements of form, color and tone into a resonant whole." (in Oskar Kokoschka 1886-1980, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1986, p. 139)
Although Wingler dates the work as a 1923 Dresden picture, the technique employed is more comparable to Kokoschka's monumental figurative style of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The lighter colors and expressionistic brushwork of Mädchen mit Blumen are similar in style to the artist's Trudel series of the early 1930s. Olda Kokoschka has dated this work 1932. It was most likely executed at No. 3 Villa Camilias, the house which Kokoschka rented in Paris from 1931-1932 before his return to Vienna.
From the middle of the 1920s, the artist's figures became increasingly sculptural and painterly as he was drawn to depicting the heroic in favor of the diminutive and decorative, culminating in powerful expressive forms present in figure compositions such as Mädchen mit Blumen. Despite the light ambience of the work, the model is rendered with an intense brushwork embodying the monumental plastic style which Kokoschka was to develop fully by 1937, the year he painted his famous Selbstbildnis als "entarteter" Künstler (Wingler, no. 311). Of this style, Richard Calvocoressi wrote, "Not the least remarkable aspect...is Kokoschka's brushwork, the superficial untidiness and spontaneity of which conceals a deft, assured touch which unites all the disparate elements of form, color and tone into a resonant whole." (in Oskar Kokoschka 1886-1980, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1986, p. 139)
Although Wingler dates the work as a 1923 Dresden picture, the technique employed is more comparable to Kokoschka's monumental figurative style of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The lighter colors and expressionistic brushwork of Mädchen mit Blumen are similar in style to the artist's Trudel series of the early 1930s. Olda Kokoschka has dated this work 1932. It was most likely executed at No. 3 Villa Camilias, the house which Kokoschka rented in Paris from 1931-1932 before his return to Vienna.