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Lot Essay
'I was too small to bear great joy. But with time I will acquire the stature needed to bring up that small joy (my promised little boy), who in turn will then grow to have the capacity for unending joy, not like us, who are only able to pull a face and clench our fists when Fortuna, sober yet of good cheer, invites us to make a life-short flight across the glassy globe (O. Kokoschka, letter to A. Mahler, late July 1914, quoted in A. Weidinger, Kokoschka and Alma Mahler, Munich and New York, 1996, p. 69-70).
Its whereabouts long unknown, Fortuna was painted by Oscar Kokoschka during the period 1914-15, amidst the outbreak of the First World War. It was quite possibly inspired by the statue of Fortuna gracing the Dogana in Venice, which Kokoschka may have seen on his trip to Italy in 1913, as well as by Albrecht Dürer's engraving Nemesis (The Great Fortune), which was well-known at the time. Here we are presented with the arresting image of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fortune and personification of luck, standing atop a globe which hovers above a distant landscape. An allegory of fortune and fate, it appears to depict Alma Mahler, Kokoschka's lover at the time, who is represented as the nude Fortuna (Ibid).
Mahler's personification as Fortuna indicates the central role she then occupied in Kokoschka's life. She is thus representing someone whose fate is inextricably linked to his and who, in the artist's eyes, is in control of his destiny. Kokoschka had met Mahler, the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler, in 1912. Enchanted by her, he proposed just three days after their first meeting. Their ensuing tempestuous three year relationship proved a fundamental inspiration for many of Kokoschka's great works of the period, including Fortuna. Kokoschka and Mahler's relationship ended when, in January 1915, the artist went off to fight in the First World War. That same year, Mahler rekindled her relationship with the architect Walter Gropius whom she married in secret in August of 1915.
Its whereabouts long unknown, Fortuna was painted by Oscar Kokoschka during the period 1914-15, amidst the outbreak of the First World War. It was quite possibly inspired by the statue of Fortuna gracing the Dogana in Venice, which Kokoschka may have seen on his trip to Italy in 1913, as well as by Albrecht Dürer's engraving Nemesis (The Great Fortune), which was well-known at the time. Here we are presented with the arresting image of Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fortune and personification of luck, standing atop a globe which hovers above a distant landscape. An allegory of fortune and fate, it appears to depict Alma Mahler, Kokoschka's lover at the time, who is represented as the nude Fortuna (Ibid).
Mahler's personification as Fortuna indicates the central role she then occupied in Kokoschka's life. She is thus representing someone whose fate is inextricably linked to his and who, in the artist's eyes, is in control of his destiny. Kokoschka had met Mahler, the widow of the composer Gustav Mahler, in 1912. Enchanted by her, he proposed just three days after their first meeting. Their ensuing tempestuous three year relationship proved a fundamental inspiration for many of Kokoschka's great works of the period, including Fortuna. Kokoschka and Mahler's relationship ended when, in January 1915, the artist went off to fight in the First World War. That same year, Mahler rekindled her relationship with the architect Walter Gropius whom she married in secret in August of 1915.