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(Stroke. 2005;36:2037.)
© 2005 American Heart Association, Inc.

Special Report

Oskar Kokoschka and Auguste Forel

Life Imitating Art or a Stroke of Genius?

From the Stroke Service, Department of Medical Gerontology, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, Adelaide and Meath Hospital, Dublin, Ireland.

Correspondence to Professor Desmond O’Neill, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, Adelaide and Meath Hospital; Dublin, Republic of Ireland 24. E-mail des.oneill{at}amnch.ie

In the spring of 1910, Oskar Kokoschka painted a portrait of the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, neuroanatomist, temperance champion, and myrmecologist Auguste Forel. The painting is a remarkable psychological portrait but also appears to predict the strokes and right hemiparesis that affected Forel more than a year later. Although it is possible that Kokoschka shared a gift of psychic prediction with his mother and grandmother, a more likely explanation can be ascribed to a combination of the artist’s acute perception and the presence of subclinical signs of stroke disease.

Key Words: cerebrovascular accident • history