Woman in Blue

In Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, the young painter Oskar Kokoschka fell in love with Alma Mahler, a well-known salon hostess in Viennese society and widow of the composer Gustav Mahler. The obsessive love that Oskar Kokoschka developed for Alma Mahler within a very short time found expression in paintings, drawings, fans and a mural. He reached the peak of this creative obsession around 1919, when he had a life-size doll modelled on Alma Mahler made by the doll maker Hermine Moos. Woman in Blue (1919) was the first painting to take the doll as its subject and marked a turning point in Kokoschka’s painting style.
For the first time in over 30 years, Kokoschka’s works inspired by Alma Mahler are united in one exhibition. This cycle is both a contemporary testimony and a major expressionist work; it shows the drama of the love affair and tells of its reverberations.
The exhibition is part of the joint project Double portraits – Alma Mahler-Werfel in the Mirror of Viennese Modernism.

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