Sonia Dungyersky II

A young girl is sitting there, framed by a dog and a ball. Oskar Kokoschka‘s manner of painting is expressive and extremely vigorous. He depicts the girl’s body with broad brushstrokes, and completely dissolves individual components of the picture — such as the dog’s body — into bold strokes. As a result, his portrait assumes a planar character, while the spatial situation is so vague that the young girl, though clearly sitting, appears to be standing in front of the canvas. Kokoschka succeeds in capturing the childlike features of his model, whose gaze is both reserved and full of expectation.  

This painting was created in 1912. At the time, young Kokoschka was about to become one of Austria’s most important painters. Kokoschka remained in close contact with the cultural avantgarde of his time. He spent the summer of 1912 with friends – writer Peter Altenberg and architect Adolf Loos – in the Austrian spa town of Semmering. During their stay there, they met 6-year-old Sonia Dungyersky and her parents. 

Kokoschka produced a portrait of the girl in his eponymous work. And Altenberg, an important writer of the Wiener Moderne, processed the portrait-sitting situation in a literary manner. In his novella published the year after, the painting is given a different character, though. He describes the girl as a Tatar Queen, sitting on a „low, wrought-iron, heavy throne (…) surrounded by bleached Tatar skulls“. 

Child-like girl and Tatar Queen – these images may be very different, but both testify to the inspiring effect this meeting with Sonia Dungyersky had on both artists.