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Why did Oskar Kokoschka donate his payment for Ivan Maysky’s portrait to the Red Cross?
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Oskar Kokoschka
Austrian painter and writer Oskar Kokoschka, from a German postage stamp, c. 1986.
In 1942, while living in London, Oskar Kokoschka painted a portrait of the Russian ambassador Ivan Maysky. He donated the fee he received for this work to the Red Cross specifically to support the care of both German and Russian soldiers who had been wounded during the Battle of Stalingrad.1
This act reflected Kokoschka's broader humanitarian perspective during World War II; his work from this period was intended as an indictment of the suffering caused by all powers involved in the conflict, rather than being limited by narrow ideological considerations.1