Oskar Kokoschka. Murderer, Hope of Women

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With Graphic Intent: German and Austrian modernist works on paper Panel discussion with curators Niccola Shearman and Emily Christensen, with Dorothy Price, Anne Grasselli, Bernadette Reinhold, and Cat Hepburn. From the first decade of the 20th century, artists in Germany and Austria began experimenting with the radical potential of working on paper. The graphic arts provided opportunities to express complex ideas through the manipulation of materials and innovations in both subject matter and form. During this period, artists began depicting subjects that challenged inherited social and class norms, openly expressing anxieties around their threatened and unstable masculinity, and pushing at the very boundaries of what constituted art. In formal terms, they rejected the status of art as decorative, scorned traditional, idealised representations of the subject, and in some cases, dispensed with recognisable forms entirely. The panel event has been organised to coincide with the exhibition With Graphic Intent at The Courtauld Gallery (1 March – 22 June 2025). The exhibition presents a selection of works that grew out of these artistic experiments, primarily from The Courtauld’s collection but also including some works on loan from two distinguished private collections, and has been curated by Dr Niccola Shearman and Dr Emily Christensen, both Associate Lecturers at The Courtauld. Included in the exhibition are works by Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Otto Dix and Oskar Kokoschka. All the represented artists were associated in various ways with the Expressionist tendencies of the period. What they have in common, despite their divergent presentations, is their evident intention to use graphic arts to provoke profound responses from viewers. The event will comprise short presentations of recent academic research on several of the artists and artworks from the exhibition, followed by a group discussion among the participants. We will explore the meaning of and responses to the works in the context of their creation, and also how they continue to be relevant in the present day. Organised by Dr Niccola Shearman and Dr Emily Christensen, Associate Lecturers, The Courtauld, coinciding with their exhibition With Graphic Intent at The Courtauld. Fig: Oskar Kokoschka, The Dreaming Boys (Die träumenden Knaben), 1908 (c) Fondation Oskar Kokoschka, Vevey

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With Graphic Intent: German and Austrian modernist works on paper - lectures and panel discussion

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