Oskar Kokoschka

For more information on Oskar Kokoschka, visit Britannica.com.

(b P?chlarn, Lower Austria, 1 March 1886; d Montreux, 22 Feb 1980). Austrian painter, printmaker and writer. He revolutionized the art of the turn of the century, adopting a radical approach to art, which was for him essential to the human condition and politically engaged. Kokoschka promoted a new visual effect in painting, related to making visible the immaterial forces active behind the external appearance of things, in which the object was a living, moving substance that revealed its inner essence to the eye. This applied to the portraits as well as to the townscapes. The art-historical basis for his work lies in the painting tradition of Austrian late Baroque and especially in the colourfully expressive visions of Franz Anton Maulbertsch. As was true of many artists of his generation, Kokoschka's creative urge was also expressed in literature and showed a clear inclination towards music and theatre.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

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 (Pöchlarn/Danube, Austria, 1886-1980, Villeneuve), one of the greatest painters of the first half of the 20th c., is best known for his dynamic Expressionist pictures of figures and cities. Late in life he turned to mythological themes. From 1920 to 1928 he held a professorship in the Dresden Academy, but thereafter devoted himself to painting and travel, which were intimately linked. He emigrated from Prague to England in 1938, moving to Villeneuve, Switzerland, in 1954. For many years he held a summer school in Salzburg.

In 1907 Kokoschka wrote the playlet Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (furnished with illustrations). Its treatment of sex was radically novel, textually and in its stage artistry. Published in 1910 in the first number of Der Sturm, it came to be regarded as the first Expressionist play (see Expressionismus). It was set to music by Hindemith (1919, premiered 1921, Stuttgart). The short play Sphinx und Strohmann (written 1907, published 1913) was turned into three acts, re-titled Hiob, and, in 1917, produced by Kokoschka himself. Another play on sex, written in 1911, was published in 1913 as Der brennende Dornbusch. War experience led to the conception of his only full-length play, Orpheus und Eurydike (1919). Die träumenden Knaben (1907) and Der gefesselte Kolumbus (1920) are notable cycles of drawings that are accompanied by a verse text. In 1956 appeared Spur im Treibsand, a volume of stories, in 1971 his autobiography, Mein Leben, Oskar Kokoschkas Schriften 1907-55, ed. H. M. Wingler in 1956, Das schriftliche Werk, 4 vols., in 1973-6.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2008)

Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 in Pöchlarn – 22 February 1980 in Montreux) was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.

Kokoschka's early career was marked by portraits of Viennese celebrities, painted in a nervously animated style. He served in the Austrian army in World War I 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 and painting the landscape.

The house in which Oskar Kokoschka was born in Pöchlarn (August 2006)

Kokoschka had a passionate, often stormy affair with Alma Mahler, shortly after the death of her four-year-old daughter Maria Mahler and her affair with Walter Gropius. 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 left below), is a tribute to her. His poem Allos Markar^[1] was inspired by this relationship. The poet Georg Trakl visited the studio while Kokoschka was painting this masterpiece.

Deemed a degenerate by the Nazis, Kokoschka fled Austria in 1934 for Prague. 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, he fled to the United Kingdom 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 and Sweden.

Kokoschka became a British citizen in 1946 and only in 1978 would regain Austrian citizenship. He traveled briefly to the United States in 1947 before settling in Switzerland, where he lived the rest of his life.

Kokoschka had much in common with his contemporary Max Beckmann. Both maintained their independence from German Expressionism, 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. Both wrote eloquently of the need to develop the art of "seeing" (Kokoschka emphasized depth perception 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.^{[citation needed]} His short play "Murderer, the Hope of Women" (1909, set ten years later by Paul Hindemith as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen) is often called the first Expressionist drama. His Orpheus und Eurydike (1918) became an opera by Ernst Krenek, who was first approached for incidental music.

Contents 1 Gallery 2 References 3 Publications 4 External links

Gallery

Oskar Kokoschka, Bride of the Wind, oil on canvas, a self-portrait expressing his unrequited love for Alma Mahler, widow of composer Gustav Mahler, 1913

Nude with Back Turned, ink, gouache and chalk drawing, c. 1907

• Early works [1]

References

1. ^ Poem 1913 Translation.Happiness is otherwise an anagram of Alma & Oskar),

• Holz, K. Modern German Art for Thirties Paris, Prague, and London: Resistance and Acquiescence in a Democratic Public Sphere, University of Michigan Press, 2004.
• A Sea Ringed with Visions Autobiography by Oskar Kokoschka Thame & Hudson London 1962 ISBN 978-0500010143
• Weidinger,Alfred Kokoschka and Alma Mahler Prestel-Verlag,Munich 1996 ISBN 3-7913-1722-9
• Extensive article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Donald Adamson, "Kokoschka at Polperro", The Cornish Banner, November 2009.

Publications

• My Life by Oskar Kokoschka 1974 Thames & Hudson, London ISBN 0 500 01087 0
• Morder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murderer, the Women's hope) Play 1909.
• Orpheus and Eurydice Drama,Vier Dramen,Berlin 1919
• Die traumenden Knaben (The Dreaming Youths) Berlin 1908
• Der Gesesstle Columbus (Columbus Bound) known as Der Weisse Tiertoter (The White Animal Alayer),Berlin 1916

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Oskar Kokoschka

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Oskar Kokoschka

• Oskar Kokoschka at Find a Grave
• Fondation Oskar Kokoschka at the Musée Jenisch in Vevey, with illustrations of Kokoschka works, text in French
• Kokoschka: Knight Errant of 20th Century Painting, a memorial lecture by Carol Hoorn Fraser

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)