Playing Cards for Whist /Bridge - King of Hearts

Arnold Schönberg Estate.

Arnold Schönberg’s card game for Whist/Bridge was designed around 1910. It initially conforms to the convention of visual allocation horizontally using the symbolism of the characters on the cards and their attributes and vertically using the colored symbol.

The coloring and ornamentation of the characters are more associative here, and a difference is only recognizable between female (Queens using colored areas) and male (Jacks and Kings using dots). He invented a system of double pictures for the characters in which the images are crossed over and the horizontal and diagonal axes are used for the reflection.

Schönberg therefore broke free from the strict mirror imagery which characterises the “Wiener Werkstätte” cards by Ditha Moser from 1906, for example, without abandoning it.

The Arnold Schönberg Estate contains the records of Arnold Schönberg (1874-1951), a composer, painter, teacher, theoretician, and innovator who is ranked amongst the prominent artistic figures in the history of western culture. His writings, apart from his compositions, are valuable documents for the musical, intellectual, and cultural history of the first half of the 20th century, as well as for exile studies, and thus for contemporary history. They are evidence of the multifaceted interests of an eminent artistic personality, and also address questions of aesthetics, Jewish affairs, politics, and religion.