The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

A colorful painting with energetic strokes depicting a scene of a woman giving birth, aided by three other people. The woman giving birth is painted in a gray shade. The three people surround her and are painted in brighter colors.

Birth of a Child (Geburt eines Kindes)

1914

Oskar Kokoschka

(Austrian, 1886–1980)
Austria
Tempera paint and charcoal
49.4 x 56 cm (19 7/16 x 22 1/16 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2017.102
© Fondation Oskar Kokoschka / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zürich
Catalogue raisonné: Strobl & Strobl 802
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

The large wall mural for which this painting on paper was a preparatory study was never executed because of the onset of World War I in Europe.

Description

Oskar Kokoschka made this drawing as a preparatory design for a wall mural on the theme of the inevitability of death. His energetic strokes of color portray a woman giving birth aided by three female attendants. The newborn’s absence and death is relayed in the lifeless pallor of the mother. The wall painting was to have been painted within the reception hall of a new cemetery complex in Breslau, but was never constructed because of World War I.
  • Kokoschka, Oskar, Alfred Weidinger, and Alice Strobl. Oskar Kokoschka: die Zeichnungen und Aquarelle 1897-1916. Salzburg: Galerie Welz, 2008.
    Kokoschka, Oskar, Alice Strobl, and Alfred Weidinger. Oskar Kokoschka: das Frühwerk (1897/98-1917) : Zeichnungen und Aquarelle. 1994.
    Peters, Emily J. and Wehn, James. “Acquisition Highlights: Drawings.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 58, no. 2 (March/April 2018): 12-13. Reproduced: P. 13; Mentioned: P. 12-13 archive.org
    Griswold, William M. “Recent Acquisitions (2013-20) at the Cleveland Museum of Art.” Burlington Magazine 163, no. 1414 (January 2021): 93-104. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 98, no. 10
  • Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (January 14-May 27, 2018).
  • {{cite web|title=Birth of a Child (Geburt eines Kindes)|url=false|author=Oskar Kokoschka|year=1914|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2017.102