Letter from Olda Kokoschka to J.P. Hodin with a postscript by Oskar Kokoschka

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[Translation/transcription]

Hotel Bellevue
Sierre
Valais

12 August 1947

Dear Dr Hodin,

Please excuse this delayed response; we ourselves don't know what's happening to us from one day to the next. OK is working very hard and is very tired, so he'll probably need a 'holiday' in London. The second exhibition in Zurich closes at the end of August, in November it's Amsterdam, then America in the spring. We're quite un-businesslike, so all this organisational work is a problem and a hindrance. The book isn't all that bad, actually; we like the first half most of all, and the important part for us is the catalogue of works. Over a hundred of the German pictures have been lost, which doesn't fill poor OK with optimism. Please, dear doctor, do you happen to have a copy (in German) of the article 'Bewusstsein der Gesichte'? We need it very much and we only have it in English. If you could send it to me here I would type out a copy and send it back to you straight away. I still have copies in London, but I can't get to them right now. As soon as OK finishes this spell of work we'll be coming back to London, but for the moment we can't say when.

Much love from us both, to you and your wife.

Yours,

Olda Kokoschka


Dearest Master Hodinus and wife and bambino,

I'm like a ship-owner on the high seas with several large sailing vessels packed with eastern delicacies, but one who is told on reaching the harbour that he'll have to pawn his precious cargo for a mess of pottage if he wants to be fed at all. In other, less poetic words: I don't know from week to week how I shall pay my hotel bills, though I've painted and continue to paint wonderful landscapes and other things - but don't want to sell.

The six leading museums in America are putting on major exhibitions of around fifty to sixty pictures from the spring of 1948 to 1949. For this reason I'm frantically looking for lost pictures from my early period. I'll have to travel to America, unfortunately, to do a lecture tour.

Please try to convince the black eagle to send some nutritious food to my brother in Vienna, who's just had beetroot for the second day running. The same goes for the child.

The address: Bohuslav Kokoschka, 29 Liebhartstalstrasse, Vienna XVI.

I'll reimburse him as soon as I find a business partner in Sweden.

You understand me! Did you read my children's stories in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung? I'm publishing a large volume of these stories, most of which I've written only recently.

More than a third of my life's work. It's like losing a limb. The French all started out as impressionists, whereas I've always been the same. That's why it would be such an injury if this picture were lost.

Do get in touch soon. Lots of love,

Yours,

OK

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