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Even in his earliest paintings the young Kokoschka can be seen to be liberating himself from the ornamental decoration of “Jugendstil” into which the Viennese circle surrounding Klimt had sought to banish psychological conflict. The Kunsthaus boasts representative works from all stages in Kokoshka’s richly varied artistic life, from these early pictures through to the explosions of colour that characterise his later years in Vevey. In the Still Life with Putto and Rabbit he employs a curious allegory to depict the end of his relationship with Alma Mahler, which he had celebrated shortly before in his masterly Bride of the Wind (Museum of Fine Arts, Basel). The iridescent colour of both these paintings shows Kokoschka’s visionary creative power at its height.
