KOKOSCHKA, Oskar (Pöchlarn, 1886 – Montreux, 1980)
Kokoschka was born in 1886 in the small Austrian town of Pöchlarn, on the banks of the Danube, and began his artistic life in the context of the turn-of-the-century Vienna, during that mythical period which saw, with the last years of the already dying Austrio-Hungarian Empire, an unprecedented cultural blossoming.
In 1904, Kokoschka began his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule, an institution linked to
the Jugendstil, where he was noticed due to his independent and rebel spirit. In 1908 he began to collaborate with the Wiener Werkstätte, which published his first illustrated book, Die träumenden Knaben (Dreaming Children), in which he combined texts and free verse with colour lithographs. In his youth he dedicated himself to his artistic activity, painting mainly portraits of Viennese intellectuals, and to writing. His works and his two plays, Sphinx und Strohamann (The Sphinx and the Scarecrow) and Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (Murder, Women’s Hope), considered today as the beginning of German expressionist theatre, caused great scandal at the 1909 Internationale Kunstschau.
In 1910 he spent some time in Berlin, where he collaborated with Herwarth Walden’s magazine Der Sturm and, in 1912, he lived a tempestuous relationship with Alma Mahler, which marked him deeply. During the First World War he was badly wounded, and did not recover for years. Between 1919 and 1922 he taught at the Kunstakademie in Dresden, and later travelled around Europe, Africa and the Far East, at a time when he was beginning to be acknowledged and his paintings were being exhibited in prestigious museums and galleries. With the arrival of Nazism his works of art were confiscated and considered “degenerate”, so he moved to Prague, where he met Olda Pavlovska, who would later become his wife. With the spread of Nazism, he fled to England in 1938, and in 1947 he became a British citizen.
In 1953 he returned to Austria and set up his Schule des Sehens (School of Seeing) in Salzburg, while his art regained the prestige it had lost. That same year he settled permanently in Villeneuve, on Lake Geneva, where he spent the rest of his life.
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