Arnold Schönberg: self-portrait, watercolour, 1935
Die Selbstporträts in verschiedensten „Stilen“ und Techniken dienten ihm dazu, sein Befinden in einem gewissen Moment seines Lebens zu dokumentieren. Beeindruckend ist das Selbstporträt, das er am 30. Dezember 1935, wenige Tage nach dem Tod seines Schülers und Freundes Alban Berg malte.
[The self-portraits in a wide variety of “styles” and techniques allowed him to document his feeling at a particular moment of his life. The self-portrait he painted on 30 December 1935, just days after the death of his pupil and friend Alban Berg, is particularly striking. (ed. trans.)]
Nuria Schönberg Nono on her father's paintings, 2002
Autumn 1935 was a very trying time for Arnold Schönberg both privately and professionally: financial worries, bureaucratic irritations and poor health exacted their toll. A concert in Los Angeles arranged by director Otto Klemperer that Schönberg was able to direct and which was dedicated exclusively to his music, seemed to offer some hope. Yet in a letter from 15 January 1936 to his friend, the composer Anton Webern, Schönberg complained of the limited rehearsal time and the orchestra, which in his words was “very slow on the uptake”. The concert had taken place on 27 December 1935. At roughly the same time Arnold Schönberg learned, through American newspapers, of the death of his pupil and friend Alban Berg, who had died of blood poisoning three days earlier in Vienna. In his self-portrait of 30 December 1935, he seems to have come to terms with the sad experiences and trials of the preceding weeks. Schönberg's visual artworks are characterised by the self-portraits from his various phases of life.
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