Oskar Kokoschka
portrait Leo Kestenberg, 1926/1927

Artist
Oskar Kokoschka

Title
Portrait Leo Kestenberg

Year of creation
1926/27

Technique and dimensions
oil on canvas, 127 x 102 cm

Year of acquisition
2008

In the winter of 1926/27, Kokoschka asked Kestenberg to be his model for a portrait.

Leo Kestenberg remembered:
"I was happy and enthusiastic, and he immediately got to work. He regularly called me to the meetings late in the evening, ... since I was tied up with my work in the ministry during the day. He started with him with a certain playful hesitation, and I could see that this resulted in five or six pictures that he painted over again and again. During these sessions, which always lasted late into the night, he jokingly called me a governor A tremendous creative power suddenly came over him, which came over him like a divine command. From then on he was so involved that he stamped out the picture with rhythmic brush strokes. It is a larger-than-life portrait, complete stories in his portraits tell, is also happily achieved in my picture."

In his contribution "What Kokoschka means to me" for the book "Confession to Kokoschka" published by Josef Paul Hodin in 1963, Kestenberg also commented in detail about his portrait. It says:
"In this picture, Kokoschka gave me a new gift every day that which essentially makes up my life: my wife, who appears in this picture at the piano, and musical education, which is brought about by the hint of the theater with its ranks, the Volksbühne, and is captured by the sphinx-like appearance of a work. Above all, I have to mention that the imperious gesture he makes to me in the picture through his clenched fists arises from the irony that runs through Kokoschka's entire personality."