Oskar Kokoschka; Creator of black portraits

Oskar Kokoschka; Creator of black portraitsOskar Kokoschka; Creator of black portraits

Hans Titz and Erica Titz-Conrat / 1909 New York Museum of Modern Art / MoMA

Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian painter, poet and playwright. In 1905 he organized an exhibition on avant-garde art at the Vienna School of Art; Where his violent portraits, inspired by Van Gogh, sparked so much controversy that he was expelled from the school of art.

Kokoschka called her expressionist portraits "black portraits," and the characters she modeled were so  heinous that she became known as "Freud the Painter." "The one who painted the ugliness of every human soul." Kokoschka describes his performance as follows: From their faces, from the combination of their poses and their movements, I tried to guess everyone's true nature and recreate it with my own visual language, something that should remain in the memory.

Kokoschka is one of the leading artists of Expressionism who tries to show the inner personality and sensitivity of people in drawing faces, and this issue is more influenced by his own sensitive personality. In this painting, the figures are worked in the open background, and the delicate movements of the hands of Hans and his wife Erica show the mental state of the two and the sensitivity hidden behind the faces of their thinkers.

Prepared and arranged by: Narges Sahib Ekhtiari