Oskar Kokoschka Biography
Oskar Kokoschka was born in 1886 in Pöchlarn. He began painting at the age of fourteen and, when his family moved to Vienna, he was able to enroll at the School of Applied Arts in 1905 on a scholarship. He trained in the environment of the Viennese Secession, in direct contact with Klimt, who influenced his early works and made him known to the Viennese thanks to the Kunstschau of 1908. The Austrian architect Adolf Loos, who Kokoschka met in 1908 and who became his friend and patron, he introduced the artist into literary circles, where he frequented, in particular, Peter Altenberg and Karl Kraus. In the literary field, Kokoschka established himself with the comedy The Assassin, the Hope of Women which, staged in 1908, is considered the first work of expressionist theatre. Essentially self-taught, he established himself in Germany as a painter thanks to a series of portraits of Austrian figures commissioned by Loos, including the Portrait of Peter Altenberg of 1909. In 1912 he exhibited in Berlin and Cologne, and some of his works were acquired by various German museums . In the drawings made between 1907 and 1912 the figures were drawn delicately and arranged irregularly, sometimes Kokoschka voluntarily left the surfaces empty so that the observer's attention was concentrated on the material part. With The Bride of the Wind, in 1914, his agitated and nervous, essentially tragic painting reached full expressive maturity which placed him in a personal position within Expressionism. From those years onwards he progressively preferred to deal with large spaces, adopting bright and luminous colors in his painting, characteristic of German Expressionism. Kokoschka undertook a series of trips to Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor, intensifying his activity as an engraver and painter, creating portraits, mythological subjects and many landscapes depicting foreign places. He continued to travel the world and, under the pressure of political events, changed nationality twice. From 1934 to 1938 he lived in Prague, and for the next fifteen years in London; in 1953 he settled permanently in Switzerland. Kokoschka died in Villeneuve in 1980.
