Oskar Kokoschka

Renowned for his "psychoanalytical" portraits and landscapes, Austrian painter, graphic artist, and author Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was a leading exponent of Expressionism and a key figure in the art of Central Europe.

Oskar Kokoschka was born on March 1, 1886, in Pöchlarn, Austria. At the age of 18, he won a scholarship to the Arts and Crafts School in Vienna, where he studied from 1905 to 1909. As early as 1907 he produced his first portraits, which have expressive power, and he began his career landscapes, still lifes, and compositions of a symbolical or religious character. His first book, The Dreaming Boys (1908), a poem he wrote, illustrated, printed, and bound himself, shows the influence of William Morris. Kokoschka also wrote his first plays at this time.

In 1910, sponsored by his friend and prominent architect, Adolf Loos, Kokoschka made his first journey abroad, painting landscapes and portraits in Switzerland (for example, the portrait of Auguste Forel; the landscape Dent du Midi). He also went to Berlin, where he supplied a regular feature, the "portrait of the week," for the periodical Der Sturm. By World War I he was famous in Austria and Germany. Seriously wounded at the Russian front in 1916, Kokoschka was invalided to Dresden. In 1919 he became professor at the Academy of Arts there, where he remained until 1924.

Kokoschka then began a series of journeys that lasted until 1931. He painted the people, landscapes, and great cities of practically every country in Europe and North Africa. In the magnificent landscape series, he used impressionist techniques interpreted in a highly personal, dramatic manner.

Kokoschka lived in Vienna from 1931 to 1934, when he moved to Prague, Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic). He painted this city more than any other, with London taking second place. In 1937 his works in German public collections were removed by the Nazis as "degenerate."

In 1938 Kokoschka and his wife, Olda, emigrated to London, where they spent World War II. The artist became a British citizen in 1947. After the war he made several journeys, all as important for his later work as were his travels in the 1920s. There were several trips to Italy (exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 1948), the United States (lectures in Boston in 1949 and in Minneapolis in 1952), and Germany.

In 1953 Kokoschka moved from London to Villeneuve on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. That year, deciding to counteract the spread of abstract art, he founded the School of Seeing in Salzburg. He said: "With astonishment we must view the fact that artists feel themselves obliged to break a lance for modern science. The theory of so-called nonobjective art postulates a theoretical system, analogous to the scientific hypothesis, which is detached from the world of visual perception."

Kokoschka worked in all media, producing watercolors, book illustrations, monumental compositions (The Prometheus Saga, 1950; Thermopylae, 1954; Amor and Psyche), and stage designs (Mozart's The Magic Flute, 1955; The Fettered Phantasy by Raimund, 1962; Verdi's Un ballo in maschera, 1963). In 1962 he had a retrospective exhibition of paintings, drawings, lithographs, stage designs, and books at the Tate Gallery in London.

Kokoschka was the grand old man of figurative painting in the 20th century. His portraits were among the most remarkable of the century. His paintings of cities evoke the special spirit of each. He was also a teacher of the young in defending the tenets of European humanism. To celebrate his eightieth birthday in 1966, large retrospective exhibitions were organized in many countries.

Further Reading

Introduction to Kokoschka (trans. 1958), Wingler's Oskar Kokoschka: The Work of the Painter (trans. 1958) contains a works list and life data. Kokoschka (1963), with color plates, is introduced by a colloquy between the artist and Ludwig Goldscheider. Fritz Schmalenbach, Oskar Kokoschka (trans. 1967), is an analytical study of his early style as a painter. Walter H. Sokel, ed., The Anthology of German Expressionist Drama: A Prelude to the Absurd (1963), contains two plays by Kokoschka, Murderer, the Womańs Hope and Job. See also Edith Hoffmann, Oskar Kokoschka (1947). □

Kokoschka, Oskar (1886–1980). Austrian Expressionist painter, graphic artist, and writer (he became a Czech citizen in 1937 and a British citizen in 1947 but reverted to Austrian nationality in 1975). He was born in Pöchlarn of Austrian and Czech parents and grew up mainly in Vienna, where he studied at the School of Arts and Crafts from 1905 to 1909 (in this period he also worked for the Wiener Werkstätte, painting fans and designing postcards among other things). In 1909–10 he began to make an impact as a painter with his ‘psychological portraits', in which the soul of the sitter was thought to be laid bare. Ernst Gombrich has written of these works: ‘Much was made at the time by Kokoschka's champions and detractors of the claim that in his portraits he represented his sitter's soul … what makes these portraits the most poignant gallery of individuals painted in this century … is the intensity of the artist's personal involvement which made him sweep aside the protective covering of conventional “decorum” to reveal his compassion with a lonely and tormented human being. No wonder, perhaps, that the sitters and the public felt at first uneasy and even shocked by this exposure’ (catalogue of the exhibition ‘Kokoschka', Tate Gallery, London, 1962). A good example of this type of portrait is that of the architect Adolf Loos (Staatliche Museen, Berlin, 1909), showing the sensitive, quivering line through which Kokoschka captured what he called the ‘closed personalities, so full of tension’ of his sitters. Later his brushwork became broader and more broken, with high-keyed flickering colours.

Kokoschka had his first one-man exhibition in 1910, at Paul Cassirer's gallery in Berlin, and in the same year he began to contribute illustrations to the avant-garde Berlin periodical Der Sturm (he did a good deal of graphic work at this time). In 1915 he was badly wounded whilst serving in the Austrian army, and in 1917—still recuperating—he settled in Dresden, where he taught at the Academy from 1919 to 1924. After this he embarked on a period of wide travel that lasted for seven years, and during this time his attention turned more from portraits to landscapes, including a distinctive type of townscape seen from a high viewpoint (Jerusalem, Detroit Institute of Arts, 1929–30). In 1931 he returned to Vienna, but he was outspokenly opposed to the Nazis (who later declared his work degenerate) and he moved to Prague in 1934 and then to London in 1938. By this time he had an international reputation, but his work was as yet little known in England and he was poor throughout the war years. After the war his fortunes soon improved and he came to be generally regarded as one of the giants of modern art. From 1953 he lived mainly at Villeneuve in Switzerland, and from 1953 to 1963 he ran a summer school at Salzburg, the Schule des Sehens (School of Seeing).

In his later years Kokoschka continued to paint landscapes and portraits, but his most important works of this time are allegorical and mythological pictures, including the Prometheus ceiling (1950) for the house of Count Seilern (an Anglo-Austrian art historian and collector) at Princes Gate in London, and the Thermopylae triptych (1954) for Hamburg University. Kokoschka remained steadfastly unaffected by modern movements and throughout his long life he pursued his highly personal and imaginative version of pre-1914 Expressionism. Unlike many other Expressionists, however, he was essentially optimistic in outlook. His writings include an autobiography, Mein Leben (1971, English translation, My Life, 1974), and several plays, the most important of which is Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen (‘Murderer Hope of Women'), an early example of Expressionist theatre that caused outrage when it was first perfomed in 1908 because of its violence.

Kokoschka, Oskar (b Pöchlarn, 1 Mar. 1886; d Montreux, Switzerland, 22 Feb. 1980). Austrian Expressionist painter, printmaker, and writer (he became a Czech citizen in 1937 and a British citizen in 1947, but he reverted to Austrian nationality in 1975). His formative years were spent in Vienna, where in 1909 he began to make an impact with his ‘psychological portraits’, in which the soul of the sitter was thought to be laid bare. A good example is his portrait of the architect Adolf Loos (1909, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), showing the sensitive, quivering line through which Kokoschka captured what he called the ‘closed personalities, so full of tension’ of his sitters. Later his brushwork became much broader and more broken, with high-keyed flickering colours.

In 1915 Kokoschka was badly wounded whilst serving in the Austrian army, and in 1917—still recuperating—he settled in Dresden, where he taught at the Academy from 1919 to 1924. After this he embarked on a period of wide travel that lasted for seven years, and during this time his attention turned more from portraits to landscapes, including a distinctive type of townscape seen from a high viewpoint (Jerusalem, 1929–30, Detroit Inst. of Arts). In 1931 he returned to Vienna, but he was outspokenly opposed to the Nazis (who later declared his work degenerate) and he moved to Prague in 1934 and then to London in 1938. By this time he had an international reputation, but his work was as yet little known in England and he was poor throughout the war years. After the war his fortunes soon improved and he came to be generally regarded as one of the giants of modern art. From 1953 he lived mainly at Villeneuve in Switzerland, and from 1953 to 1963 he ran a summer school at Salzburg. In his later years Kokoschka continued to paint landscapes and portraits, but his most important works of this time are allegorical and mythological pictures, including the Prometheus ceiling (1950) for the house of Count Seilern (see Courtauld) at Princes Gate in London, and the Thermopylae triptych (1954) for Hamburg University.

Kokoschka remained steadfastly unaffected by modern movements and throughout his long and energetic life he pursued his highly personal and imaginative version of pre-1914 Expressionism. Unlike many other Expressionists, however, he was essentially optimistic in outlook. His writings include an autobiography (1971), and several plays, the most important of which is Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer Hope of Women), an early example of Expressionist theatre that caused outrage when it was first perfomed in 1908 because of its violence.

Kokoschka, Oskar (1886–1980). Austrian Expressionist painter, printmaker, and writer (he became a Czech citizen in 1937 and a British citizen in 1947, but reverted to Austrian nationality in 1975). His formative years where spent in Vienna, where in 1909 he began to make an impact with his ‘psychological portraits’, in which the soul of the sitter was thought to be laid bare. A good example is his portrait of the architect Adolf Loos (1909, Staatliche Museen, Berlin), showing the sensitive, quivering line through which Kokoschka captured what he called the ‘closed personalities, so full of tension’ of his sitters. Later his brushwork became much broader and more broken, with high-keyed flickering colours. In 1915 he was badly wounded whilst serving in the Austrian army, and in 1917—still recuperating—he settled in Dresden, where he taught at the Academy from 1919 to 1924. After this he embarked on a period of wide travel that lasted for seven years, and during this time his attention turned more from portraits to landscapes, including a distinctive type of townscape seen from a high viewpoint (Jerusalem, 1929–30, Detroit Inst. of Arts). In 1931 he returned to Vienna, but he was outspokenly opposed to the Nazis (who later declared his work degenerate) and he moved to Prague in 1934 and then to London in 1938. By this time he had an international reputation, but his work was as yet little known in England and he was poor throughout the war years. After the war his fortunes soon improved and he came to be widely regarded as one of the giants of modern art. From 1953 he lived mainly at Villeneuve in Switzerland, and from 1953 to 1963 he ran a summer school at Salzburg. In his later years Kokoschka continued to paint landscapes and portraits, but his most important works of this time are allegorical and mythological pictures, including the Prometheus ceiling (1950) for the house of Count Seilern (see Courtauld) at Princes Gate in London, and the Thermopylae triptych (1954) for Hamburg University. Kokoschka remained steadfastly unaffected by modern movements, pursuing throughout his long life his highly personal version of pre-1914 Expressionism. Unlike many other Expressionists, however, he was essentially optimistic in outlook. His writings include an autobiography (1971), and several plays, notably Mörder Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer Hope of Women), an early example of Expressionist theatre that caused outrage when it was first perfomed in 1908 because of its violence.

Oskar Kokoschka , 1886-1980, Austrian expressionist painter and writer. After teaching at the art academy in Dresden (1920-24), Kokoschka traveled extensively in Europe and N Africa. In 1937 his works were removed from German galleries by the Nazis, who considered his work degenerate. He moved to London in 1938 and after World War II lived in Switzerland and established an international summer school in Salzburg.

Kokoschka was influenced by the elegant work of Klimt , but soon developed his own distinctive expressionist style (see expressionism ). His early portraits (c.1909-14) emphasize psychological insight and tension (e.g., the portrait of Hans Tietze and his wife, 1909; Mus. of Modern Art, New York City). The same restless, energetic draftsmanship is characteristic of his expressionist landscapes and his striking posters and lithographs. His landscapes include Jerusalem (Detroit Inst. of Arts) and View of Prague (Phillips Memorial Gall., Washington, D.C.).

Bibliography: See his volume of watercolors, drawings, and writings (1962); reproductions of his work, comp. by B. Bultmann (1961), L. Goldscheider (1963), E. G. Rathenau (1970), and J. Tomeš (1972); biography by E. Hoffmann (1947).

Kokoschka, Oskar (1886–1980) Austrian painter. He was influenced by the elegance of Gustav Klimt but soon developed his own type of expressionism. His work is characterized by forceful, energetic draughtsmanship and restless brushwork.

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