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Lot Essay
Following the Second World War, in 1947, Austrian-born Oskar Kokoschka and his wife Olda settled in Switzerland. Near the town of Villeneuve, in the canton of Vaud, they bought a house. Villa Delphi, as they named it, sat on the mountains, overlooking the Alps and Lac Léman. Executed in 1958, Die Zeder presents that landscape which was to become backdrop to the last third of the artist’s life, until his death in Montreux in 1980.
This vigorously delicate vista is an invitation to sight and sense. A mesh of rapid brushstrokes – formless, arbitrary in appearance – conceals the presence of a cedar tree. With a paused look, we untangle the brown and green strokes and realise the conifer’s shape, in fact rendered with detailed vividity. Branches swing, ever-green tips breath. In the present, work Kokoschka brings the cedar to life. With the same attentive eye, the surrounding, rich, alpine landscape is revealed. On the right, a chalet-like roof appears from the soft pasture. On the left, a line of trees leads upwards onto the vast, snow-tipped mountains. Peaks and sky are blue, silver, and white. Below the mountains, the serene mass of the lake.
In the later years of his life, Kokoschka explored the depths of painting, becoming particularly concerned with the implications of seeing and representation. Die Zeder demonstrates Kokoschka’s mature pictorial innovations and is exemplar of his use of the bifocal perspective. A similar Alpine vista from 1956, Glion, vue sur le lac Léman (Musée cantonale des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne), deploys the same compositional paradigm. In both landscapes we find not one, but two focal centres. Kokoschka believed isometric perspective to be somewhat reductive, as ‘man has two eyes’. This compositional resort – embracing and incorporating peripheric sight – enables our gaze is able to surmount and to absorb the entire scene. A more ample representation and a richer visual experience.
Despite living through both World Wars, Kokoschka firmly believed in the transformative power of art. He desired good painting and sincerely knew the exigence of creating good painting. A mission which led him to commit the last part of his life to teaching, founding The School of Vision, in Salzburg , in 1953. Through his exile years in Switzerland, Kokoschka taught thousands of students, promoting his beliefs on art making. His didactic determination continued after his death, as the schools which he established still operate today. Die Zeder embodies this serene and introspective moment in Kokoschka’s art.
This vigorously delicate vista is an invitation to sight and sense. A mesh of rapid brushstrokes – formless, arbitrary in appearance – conceals the presence of a cedar tree. With a paused look, we untangle the brown and green strokes and realise the conifer’s shape, in fact rendered with detailed vividity. Branches swing, ever-green tips breath. In the present, work Kokoschka brings the cedar to life. With the same attentive eye, the surrounding, rich, alpine landscape is revealed. On the right, a chalet-like roof appears from the soft pasture. On the left, a line of trees leads upwards onto the vast, snow-tipped mountains. Peaks and sky are blue, silver, and white. Below the mountains, the serene mass of the lake.
In the later years of his life, Kokoschka explored the depths of painting, becoming particularly concerned with the implications of seeing and representation. Die Zeder demonstrates Kokoschka’s mature pictorial innovations and is exemplar of his use of the bifocal perspective. A similar Alpine vista from 1956, Glion, vue sur le lac Léman (Musée cantonale des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne), deploys the same compositional paradigm. In both landscapes we find not one, but two focal centres. Kokoschka believed isometric perspective to be somewhat reductive, as ‘man has two eyes’. This compositional resort – embracing and incorporating peripheric sight – enables our gaze is able to surmount and to absorb the entire scene. A more ample representation and a richer visual experience.
Despite living through both World Wars, Kokoschka firmly believed in the transformative power of art. He desired good painting and sincerely knew the exigence of creating good painting. A mission which led him to commit the last part of his life to teaching, founding The School of Vision, in Salzburg , in 1953. Through his exile years in Switzerland, Kokoschka taught thousands of students, promoting his beliefs on art making. His didactic determination continued after his death, as the schools which he established still operate today. Die Zeder embodies this serene and introspective moment in Kokoschka’s art.