Alma and Kokoschka: Their First Meeting
Kokoschka first met Alma Mahler on April 12, 1912. The accounts of their first meeting differ quite a bit, which I thought was interesting.
There is an account of their meeting by Kokoschka as told to French photographer Brassai in 1930 or 1931:
"Alma was the wife of Gustav Mahler...He had been dead for a year when I met her, which was in 1912, at Carl Moll's, a painter who often invited his friends to dinners in his mansion, dinner followed by chamber-music concerts. It was on one of those occasions that I first came face to face with Alma. She had just returned from abroad. How beautiful she was, and how seductive she looked beneath her mourning veil! She enchanted me! And I had the impression that she was not indifferent to me, either. In fact after dinner, she took me by the arm and drew me into an adjoining room, where she sat down and played the Liebestod on the piano for me" (7).
Alma Mahler also recorded her first encounter with Kokoschka in her autobiography:
"He had brought some rough paper with him and wanted to draw. But after a little while I said I couldn't be stared at like that and asked him if I could play the piano meanwhile. He began to draw, coughing intermittently and then trying to hide his handkerchief because it had specks of blood on it. We barely spoke, but even then he could not draw. We stood up-and he suddenly embraced me wildly. This kind of embrace was alien to me...I did not respond in the least and it was precisely this that seemed to affect him" (7-8).
This information was taken from:
Weidinger, Alfred. Kokoschka and Alma Mahler. Munich: Prestel, 1996.
There is an account of their meeting by Kokoschka as told to French photographer Brassai in 1930 or 1931:
"Alma was the wife of Gustav Mahler...He had been dead for a year when I met her, which was in 1912, at Carl Moll's, a painter who often invited his friends to dinners in his mansion, dinner followed by chamber-music concerts. It was on one of those occasions that I first came face to face with Alma. She had just returned from abroad. How beautiful she was, and how seductive she looked beneath her mourning veil! She enchanted me! And I had the impression that she was not indifferent to me, either. In fact after dinner, she took me by the arm and drew me into an adjoining room, where she sat down and played the Liebestod on the piano for me" (7).
Alma Mahler also recorded her first encounter with Kokoschka in her autobiography:
"He had brought some rough paper with him and wanted to draw. But after a little while I said I couldn't be stared at like that and asked him if I could play the piano meanwhile. He began to draw, coughing intermittently and then trying to hide his handkerchief because it had specks of blood on it. We barely spoke, but even then he could not draw. We stood up-and he suddenly embraced me wildly. This kind of embrace was alien to me...I did not respond in the least and it was precisely this that seemed to affect him" (7-8).
This information was taken from:
Weidinger, Alfred. Kokoschka and Alma Mahler. Munich: Prestel, 1996.
posted by Kokoschka Play at
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