Pietà.

  • Poster for the Drama Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen [Murderer, the Hope of Women] at the Internationale Kunstschau 1909
  • Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980)
  • 1909
  • Color lithograph on paper
  • Leopold Museum, Vienna

Oskar Kokoschka was a painter and a dramatist. He wrote a play that was premiered at the Internationale Kunstschau of 1909. Kokoschka’s play described the relationship between men and women as a power struggle defined by violence and desire, and its intense emotions and destructive theme caused a big controversy. Kokoschka designed this poster for the advertisement of his own play. The drawing is based on the motif of the Pietà, but the Virgin Mary holding the blood-smeared body of Christ in her arms is not a mourning woman but a woman full of beastly fury. The deliberately coarse typeface emphasizes the wild and brutal character of this poster and the play.