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Oskar Kokoschka ( 1886 - 1980 )  Category ( Artists ) [suggest a correction]
 

Oskar KokoschkaOskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet, and playwright, famous for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes. Born to a family of foresters in 1886, his father was descended from a long ling of goldsmiths, but by the time his son was born he worked as a traveling salesman for a jewelry firm. When he was only a few months old, the family moved to Vienna. In 1904 he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts). He planned to become an art teacher, but his exhibitions during 1910-11 demonstrated he could attract the movers and shakers of the art world, and he began to think of painting as a career in itself. His early career was marked by portraits of Viennese celebrities. Early on, he was known for a nervous, animated style. At the outbreak of World War I he served in the Austrian army and was wounded. While recovering in the hospital, doctors determined Kokoschka was mentally unfit for duty. He happily returned to his career as an artist, traveling across Europe and painting the landscape.

Kokoschka had a passionate and stormy affair with Alma Mahler, a Viennese socialite who was married to the composer Gustav Mahler. After several years, Alma rejected him, claiming that their relationship was too passionate. Kokoschka continued to love her the rest of his life, and one of his greatest works, The Tempest (Bride of the Wind) is a tribute to her.

Some years later the Nazis declared Kokoschka a degenerate (as they did with many avant-garde creative artists). He fled to Prague in 1934, where he founded the Oskar-Kokoschka-Bund with other expatriate artists. Once Czechoslovakia was threatened, in 1938, he fled again, this time to the United Kingdom. With the help of the British Committee for Refugees, all members of his group were able to escape. Kokoschka became a British citizen in 1946 and only regained his Austrian citizenship in 1978. Eventually he settled in Switzerland, where he lived the rest of his life.

Kokoschka shared a number of common traits 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 create individual styles. Both were also strongly interested in the need to develop the art of "seeing," and both were masters of innovative oil painting techniques. Despite his many losses and challenges, Kokoschka did not become embittered. His memoir, A Sea Ringed with Visions, is considered as wildly psychedelic as anything written by others under the influence of actual hallucinogens.

Image: 'Nude with Back Turned', ink, gouache and chalk drawing by Oskar Kokoschka, c. 1907, private collection


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Title :Oskar Kokoschka - Biography
Description : A biography of artist Oskar Kokoschka.
 
 
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