7069 - Kokoschka, Oskar

Kokoschka, Oskar Portrait of a Woman Black chalk on vellum. Circa 1922. 60 x 49 cm. Inscribed in pencil by another hand at the bottom edge of the picture: “Portrait of a Woman, from the series Daughters of the Alliance, ca. 1922,” as well as dated “1921” and labeled “686/-1”; on the reverse, a fragment of a round customs stamp. During a piano concert by Karl Maria Swoboda—then an assistant to Max Dvořak at the Institute of Art History at the University of Vienna—Kokoschka, in the summer of 1920, captured in a series of about 20 drawings "captured the reflection of the musical and emotional experience in the physiognomy and gestures of Camilla Swoboda, the musician’s wife" (Hans M. Wingler/Friedrich Welz, Oskar Kokoschka. The Print Works, Salzburg 1975, p. 129). According to a handwritten note on the sheet, our female portrait was likely created in this context. In 1921, Kokoschka had planned a series of lithographs titled “The Daughters of the Covenant,” to be published by Paul Cassirer; however, it was never published as a complete series, but only as individual sheets bearing Old Testament girls’ names. The woman depicted in our portrait resembles the Russian Anna Kallin (cf. the sheet “Recha,” Wingler/Welz 145), with whom Kokoschka had become friends in Dresden. Provenance: Private collection, Vienna Lit.: Ernst Rathenau, *Der Zeichner. Kokoschka*, Hamburg 1961, no. 331, p. 106 - Please request condition reports for the lots, as the condition is only indicated in the catalog in exceptional cases. - Please ask for condition reports for individual lots, as the condition is usually not mentioned in the catalog.