The Red Egg

Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka - The Red Egg
If some exiled artists were hesitating to leave Czechoslovakia, in March 1939 after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, their departure became much more difficult. By then Oskar Kokoshka had fled to London. He responded to the Munich events with his painting The Red Egg in which a roasted chicken ready to by eaten (Czechoslovakia) flies off. During this period, he created several plitical allegories - ironic indictments of Nazism and other ideologies. As he recollected later, his intention was not to demonstrate a political stance but to show his approach to war. In the background, Prague is on fire with an inscription ''In Pace Munich" and with Hitler and Mussolini sitting at a table with parodied symbols of France (the cat) and England (the lion). The sliced egg on the table then suggests the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. The painting was purchased from the private collection of the Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš in the late 1950s.
date:
measurements: height 61 cm
width 76 cm
material: canvas
technique: oil
inscription:
inventory number: O 7242
gallery collection: Collection of 19th Century Art and Classical Modernism
licence: copyrighted work

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