Poster for the performance of Kokoschka’s drama “Mörder - Hoffnung der Frauen“ (“Murderer - Women’s hope“), 1909

After Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980) had already caused a stir with the presentation of his poster design The Cotton Picker for the 1908 Kunstschau, his play Murderer, the Hope of Women sealed his reputation as “chief wildling”. Premiering on 4th July 1909 at the garden theater of the Internationale Kunstschau, the play caused a veritable scandal, seeing as Kokoschka flouted bourgeois conventions and staged the relationship between man and woman as a power struggle shaped by violence and sexual desire. Wishing to promote his play, the artist designed a poster: Drawing on Christian iconography, he used the popular motif of the Pietà. Rather than depicting the Mother of Christ as a mourning woman, however, Kokoschka rendered her as a deadly femme fatale, holding the blood-smeared body of Christ in her arms. The deliberately coarse writing emphasizes the rendering’s wild and brutal character. Today, both the poster and the play are considered a first climax of Kokoschka’s Expressionist oeuvre.