KOKOSCHKA, Oskar.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Die träumenden Knaben. First edition of the complete sequence of colour lithographs for Kokoschka's fairy tale, his first graphic work."Die träumenden Knaben was intended as an illustrated children's book with accompanying colour lithographs; but Kokoschka by his own account did not really adhere to the original commission, creating instead 'an account in words and pictures of my spiritual state at that time'. The lithographs, which he described as a 'kind of free versification in pictures', are for the most part innocuous enough; but the poems are of a kind to give even a child of only moderate sensibilities screaming nightmares, an odd blend of the erotic, the brutal and the fanciful" (Vergo, p. 61).This copy does not have the two black-and-white leaves of dedication and title page or the original binding (by which the 1917 reissue can be identified).

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