Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), Austrian-born painter of Expressionist portraits and landscapes.

Kokoschka was born in Pöchlarn, a Danube town, on March 1, 1886. He studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts from 1905 to 1908. As an early exponent of the avant-garde Expressionist movement, he began to paint psychologically penetrating portraits of Viennese doctors, architects, and artists. Among these works are Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat (1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York), August Forel (1910, Mannheim Art Gallery, Germany), and Self-Portrait (1913, Museum of Modern Art).

Kokoschka was wounded in World War I and diagnosed as psychologically unstable. He taught art at the Dresden Academy from 1919 to 1924. During this time he painted The Power of Music (1919, Dresden Paintings Collection, Dresden). A succeeding seven-year period of travel in Europe and the Middle East resulted in a number of robust, brilliantly coloured landscapes and figure pieces, painted with great freedom and exuberance. Many of them are views of harbours, mountains, and cities. Examples from this period include Harbour of Marseille (1925, St Louis Art Museum, St Louis, Missouri) and Tower Bridge (1925-1926, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota).

Kokoschka, one of the artists denounced by the Nazi government of Germany as degenerate, moved in 1938 to England, where he painted anti-war pictures during World War II and became a British subject in 1947. After the war he visited the United States and settled in Switzerland. He died in Montreux on February 22, 1980. Best known as a painter, Kokoschka was also a writer. His literary works include poetry and plays, most notably Orpheus und Eurydike (1918, Orpheus and Eurydice) which was made into an opera in 1926 by the German composer Ernst Krenek, and a collection of short stories, A Sea Ringed with Visions (1956; translated 1962).