Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was the first Dutch museum to buy a painting by Oskar Kokoschka in 1950, the master painter who inspired entire generations of artists. His portraits of people and animals are the subject of the major 2013 exhibition at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Among his contemporaries Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was considered one of the most important artists of his time. Gustav Klimt calls him after a major exhibition in Vienna: 'The greatest talent of the younger generation'. The paintings and works on paper are taken to Rotterdam from private collections and important international museums and shown in the museum's large halls.

The exhibition starts with Kokoschka's earliest portraits and his discovery by the famous architect of modernism, Adolf Loos, in 1908. The exhibition ends with his last self-portrait. Kokoschka's portraits show who he knew and how he looked at the world. A number of subjects are always reflected in his oeuvre, such as child portraits, animal portraits and portraits of musicians including Schönberg and Pablo Casals. His love of music, he shares with his (ultimately unattainable) beloved Alma Mahler, widow of the befriended composer Gustav Mahler, with whom Kokoschka has an impetuous relationship.