Franz Theodor Csokor, 1918

Carry Hauser (1895–1985) attended the School of Arts and Crafts from 1912 to 1914, where he learned how to work with the most varied media and techniques. Traumatized by war service in Galicia and convinced of the idea of a “new man,” Hauser developed socially critical work which he employed in the service of socialist ideas. His Expressionism shows echoes of Cubism and Futurism. In 1918 he met the important Austrian playwright and writer Franz Theodor Csokor (1885–1969), one of the main representatives of literary Expressionism. The two artists became friends, from which resulted both this portrait and stage and costume designs for Csokor’s plays. He shows the writer here as someone who has turned in on himself, brooding, and worn down by the horrors of World War I.

AM, 2019