Paul Scheerbart

• Page from the Portfolio Menschenköpfe [Human Heads]
• Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980)
• 1916
• Publisher: Der Sturm, Berlin
• Lithograph on paper
• Leopold Museum, Vienna

This is a portrait of the German novelist and architecture theorist Paul Scheerbart. He was a prolific contributor to the Expressionist magazine, Der Sturm. In the magazine, he proposed the “glass architecture” theory which argued that the use of glass in architecture could transform human life and society. In this portrait, Scheerbart is vividly depicted in Kokoschka’s drastic strokes of varying intensity.