Oskar Kokoschka

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Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 in Pöchlarn

Pöchlarn

P?chlarn is a town in the district of Melk in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. Painter and writer Oskar Kokoschka was born here in 1886....
– 22 February 1980 in Montreux

Montreux

Montreux is a municipalities of Switzerland in the district of Vevey in the Cantons of Switzerland of Vaud in Switzerland.It is located on Lake Geneva at the foot of the Swiss Alps and has a population of 22,897....
) was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
n artist

Artist

The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art....
, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
and playwright

Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
, best known for his intense expressionistic

Expressionism

Expressionism is the tendency of an artist to distort reality for an emotional effect; it is a subjective art form. Expressionism is exhibited in many art forms, including painting, literature, theatre, film, Expressionist architecture and Expressionism ....
portraits and landscapes.

Kokoschka's early career was marked by portraits of Viennese

Vienna

Vienna is the Capital of Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million...
celebrities, painted in a nervously animated style. He served in the Austrian army in World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
and was wounded. At the hospital, the doctors decided that he was mentally unstable. Nevertheless, he continued to develop his career as an artist, traveling across Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
and painting the landscape.

Kokoschka had a passionate, often stormy affair with Alma Mahler

Alma Mahler

Alma Maria Mahler-Werfel was a Vienna socialite well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men....
, shortly after the death of her four-year-old daughter Maria Mahler and her affair with Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

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Quotations

How do I define a work of art.It is not an asset...but a man'a timid attempt to repeat the miracle that the simplest peasant girl is capable of..magically producing life out of nothing.

Encyclopedia

Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 in Pöchlarn

Pöchlarn

P?chlarn is a town in the district of Melk in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. Painter and writer Oskar Kokoschka was born here in 1886....
– 22 February 1980 in Montreux

Montreux

Austria

Artist

The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art....
, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
and playwright

Playwright

Expressionism

Vienna

World War I

Europe

Alma Mahler

Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a Germany architect and founder of Bauhaus who along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
. After several years together, Alma rejected him, explaining that she was afraid of being too overcome with passion. He continued to love her his entire life, and one of his greatest works The Tempest (Bride of the Wind) (at right below), is a tribute to her.His poem Allos Markar(1913) was inspired by this relationship. The poet Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl was a preeminent Austrian poet....
visited the studio while Kokoschka was painting this masterpiece.

Deemed a degenerate

Degenerate art

Degenerate art is the English translation of the German language entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art....
by the Nazis

Nazism

Nazism, officially National Socialism , refers to the ideology and practices of the National Socialist German Workers? Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945....
, Kokoschka fled Austria in 1934 for Prague

Prague

Prague is the Capital and World's largest cities of the Czech Republic. Its official name is Hlavn? mesto Praha, meaning Prague, the Capital City....
. There, his name was adopted by the Oskar-Kokoschka-Bund, founded by other expatriate artists, although he declined to otherwise participate (K. Holz, Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere). In 1938, when the Czechs began to mobilize for the expected invasion of the Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht

Wehrmacht was the name of the unified armed forces of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe ....
, he fled to the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
and remained there during the war. With the help of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Refugee Trust Fund), all members of the OKB were able to escape through Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....
and Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
.

Kokoschka became a British citizen in 1946 and only in 1978 would regain Austrian citizenship. He travelled briefly to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
in 1947 before settling in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
, where he lived the rest of his life.

Kokoschka had much in common with his contemporary Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann

Max Beckmann was a Germany Painting, drawing, printmaker, sculpture, and writer. Although he is usually classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement....
. Both maintained their independence from German Expressionism

German Expressionism

German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements which emerged in Germany before the first world war and reached a peak in 1920s Berlin, during the 1920s....
, yet they are now regarded as its supreme masters, who delved deeply into the art of past masters to develop unique individual styles. Their individualism left them both orphaned from the main movements of Twentieth Century modernism

Modernism

Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century....
. Both wrote eloquently of the need to develop the art of "seeing" (Kokoschka emphasized depth perception

Depth perception

Depth perception is the visual perception ability to perceive the world in three dimensions. Although any animal capable of moving around its environment must be able to sense the distance of objects in that environment, the term perception is reserved for humans, who are the only beings that can tell each other about their qualia of dist...
while Beckmann was concerned with mystical insight into the invisible realm), and both were masters of innovative oil painting techniques anchored in earlier traditions.

Kokoschka's last years were somewhat embittered, as he found himself marginalized as a curious footnote to art history. A noteworthy student of Kokoschka's "School of Seeing" was Konrad Juestel (1924-2001).

Kokoschka's literary works are as peculiar and interesting as his art. His memoir, A Sea Ringed with Visions, is as wildly psychedelic as anything written by others under the influence of actual hallucinogens. His short play "Murderer, the Hope of Women

Murderer, the Hope of Women

"Murderer, the Hope of Women" is a play written by Oskar Kokoschka. Focusing more on the actions and appearances of the characters than their words, it is characterized as an Expressionism play....
" (1909, set ten years later by Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and Conducting....
as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen
Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen

M?rder, Hoffnung der Frauen is an opera in one act by Paul Hindemith, with a German language libretto by Oskar Kokoschka based on his play written in 1907....
) is often called the first Expressionist drama. His Orpheus und Eurydike
Orpheus und Eurydike

Orpheus und Eurydike is an opera by Ernst Krenek. The German language text is based on a play by Oskar Kokoschka.Kokoschka began writing his play during his convalescence and it premiered in 1921, one year before Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus appeared....
(1918) became an opera by Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek was an Austrian composer. He explored atonality and other Contemporary classical music styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now , a study of Johannes Ockeghem , and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music ....
, who was first approached for incidental music

Incidental music

Incidental music is music in a Play , television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack."...
.

Gallery

External links

at the Musée Jenisch in Vevey
Vevey

File:Picswiss VD-43-28.jpgVevey is a town in Switzerland in the canton Vaud, on the north shore of Lake Geneva., not far from Lausanne. It was historically known as Viviscus or Vibiscum....
, with illustrations of Kokoschka works, text in French
, a memorial lecture by Carol Hoorn Fraser