Woman in Blue

From March 20 to June 22, 2025, Museum Folkwang is dedicating an exhibition to two great figures in art history: Oskar Kokoschka, pioneer of expressionism, and Alma Mahler, composer, hostess of artistic salons, networker and confidante of many important artists. For the first time in more than 30 years, Woman in Blue is bringing together in one exhibition works by Kokoschka that were inspired by Alma Mahler.

In Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century, Oskar Kokoschka fell in love with Alma Mahler, a well-known salonnière of Viennese society and widow of the composer Gustav Mahler. The obsessive and ultimately unrequited love that Oskar Kokoschka developed for Alma Mahler within a very short period of time is expressed in paintings, drawings, fans and a mural created between 1912 and 1922. The cycle is both a testimony to the times and a major expressionist work; it shows the drama of the love affair and tells of its reverberations. Despite the end of the amour fou in 1915, Alma and the experience of the relationship remained a crystallisation point for Kokoschka’s artistic explorations well into the 1920s. He reached the peak of this creative obsession around 1919, when he had a life-size doll modelled on Alma Mahler. Woman in Blue (1919) was the first painting to take the doll as its subject. It also marks a turning point in Kokoschka’s painting style.

The exhibition is part of the joint project DOPPELBILDNISSE (DOUBLE PORTRAITS)—Alma Mahler Werfel in the mirror of Viennese Modernism. With this cross-institutional project, Alte Synagoge Essen (Old Synagogue), Theater und Philharmonie Essen, Folkwang University of the Arts and Museum Folkwang are devoting themselves to the life and work of Alma Mahler-Werfel as well as the visual, musical and literary works that were inspired by her. In addition to the exhibition at Museum Folkwang, the Berliner Philharmoniker and Essener Philharmoniker orchestras will perform symphonies by Gustav Mahler dedicated to Alma Mahler. The Old Synagogue sheds light on Alma Mahler-Werfel’s role in the Jewish salons of Viennese modernism and critically reflects on her relationship to anti-Semitism. Folkwang University of the Arts is developing new productions in collaboration with various departments that look at Alma Mahler-Werfel from a contemporary perspective. Philharmonie Essen is dedicating the female composer festival her:voice to Alma Mahler’s early compositions.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and supported by RWE.

Free time-slot tickets available here.

More information on the programme of the festival DOPPELBILDNISSE (DOUBLE PORTRAITS)—Alma Mahler Werfel in the mirror of Viennese Modernism: doppelbildnisse.de