OSKAR KOKOSCHKA, EUROPEAN PORTRAITS

A life of creation

Synopsis

In 1966, Oskar Kokoschka painted the portrait of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in a face-to-face encounter in which the artist sought to probe the soul of his model.

Over the course of the sessions, Oskar Kokoschka, born in Austria, revisited his career, from the scandals of the Vienna secession to his exile in London in the face of Nazism, which shaped his legend as an anti-fascist intellectual and European visionary.

But behind this controlled narrative, historians and archives reveal the dark side of a complex creator. The portrait of Adenauer thus becomes the mirror of a man striving for posterity.