cover image Letters: 1905-1976

Letters: 1905-1976

Oskar Kokoschka. Thames & Hudson, $40 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-500-01528-5

Throughout his life, Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) kept up voluminous correspondence with friends and lovers as well as with some of the most important artists, composers, musicians and political leaders of the 20th century. The letters in this volume (selected by his wife, Olda, and his close friend, Marnau, a novelist and translator) span his student days, his youthful love affairs (particularly his liaison with Alma Mahler, widow of the composer Gustav Mahler), his military service during WW I, his travels, his exile in London during WW II and his mature artistry. Although they reveal little about Kokoschka's working methods, the letters are interesting, for in them he poured out his feelings about the political, intellectual and cultural events of his time with the passion and intensity that characterizes his expressionist paintings. The book would be more satisfactory, however, if the explanatory notes, short biographies of the recipients and chronology of the artist's life (all of which are essential for an understanding of the letters) had not been relegated to the back of the volume. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)