Oskar Kokoschka

Background

Oskar Kokoschka was born on March 1, 1886 in Pehlarn, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Pehlarn , Austria). He was the son of Gustav Josef Kokoschka, a goldsmith, and Maria Romana Kokoschka. Oskar had a sister Berta and a brother Bohuslav.The family's life was not easy, largely due to a lack of financial stability of his father.

Education

Against his father's will, Kokoschka applied to the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, now the University of Applied Arts Vienna. He received a scholarship and was one of few applicants to be accepted.Kokoschka studied there from 1904 to 1909 and was influenced by his teacher Carl Otto Czeschka in developing an original style.

Career

Following his own artistic training, Kokoschka dedicated years of his life thereafter teaching art and writing articles and speeches documenting his views and practices as an educator. Kokoschka taught in Vienna from 1911 to 1913 and then again in Dresden from 1919 to 1923.In 1908 Kokoschka was offered the opportunity of submitting works to the first Vienna Kunstschau.This government funded exhibition was established to both bring in tourists and affirm Vienna's prominence within the art world.In 1910 Kokoschka lived in Berlin and worked with the magazine "Der Sturm", where his graphic works were published.He volunteered for service as a cavalryman in the Austrian army in World War I, and in 1915 was seriously 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.In 1919, Kokoschka began teaching at the Kunstakademie Dresden.During World War II, Kokoschka painted anti-Fascist works such as the allegory What We Are Fighting For (1943).

He travelled briefly to the United States in 1947 before settling in Villeneuve, Switzerland in 1953, where he lived the rest of his life. Kokoschka spent these years as an educator at the Internationale Sommer Akademie für Bildenden Künste, (the recently deceased Ricarda Jacobi being one of his pupils) while also working on stage designs and publishing a collection of his writings.

Achievements

• Oskar Kokoschka gained prominence as a leading figure of Austrian Expressionism. Also, he founded School of Seeing in 1953.

Works

More photos

• book

  • My Life 1974

• painting

  • The Awakenings

  • Veronica's Veil

  • The Elbe at Dresden

  • The Dreaming Boys

  • Lovers with Cat

  • The Pagans

  • Portrait of the Composer Anton von Webern

  • Self-portrait (Fiesole)

  • Nude with Back Turned

  • Anschluß - Alice in Wonderland

  • Fear and Hope

  • Adele Astaire

  • Self-portrait with a brush up

  • Double Nude: Two Women

  • Augustus Bridge - Dresden

  • Dresden Neustadt

  • Self-Portrait

  • Self-Portrait with Hand by his face

  • Princess Mechtilde Lichnowsky

  • Stockholm Harbour

  • Egon Wellesz

  • Charles Bridge

  • Knight Errant (Self-Portrait)

  • The Hunt

  • Crucifixion (Golgotha)

  • The Sleepers

  • Bodegón with Affair and Rabbit

  • The Power of Music

  • OK at Easel

  • Bessie Bruce

  • Children playing

  • Albert Ehrenstein

  • Portrait of Commerce Counselor Ebenstein

  • Sleeping Woman

  • View of Prague

  • Dragons over a Flame

  • Mother and Child

  • Polperro II

  • Portrait of Carl Moll

  • Robinson

  • Portrait of Lotte Franzos

  • View of Constantinople

  • The Sailboat

  • Emil Lowenbach

  • Standing Nude Old Man

  • Child with the hands of a parent

  • The Rejected Lover

  • The Supplicant

  • Self Portrait with Crossed Arms

  • Franz Hauer

  • A Girl with Flowers

  • Arnonld Schönberg

  • Illustration for 'Die Traumenden Knaben'

  • Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat

  • Alma Mahler

  • Paul Scheebart

  • Orfeus and Euridice

  • The Morabito of Temacina

  • Arab Woman and Child

  • Bride of the Wind

  • Adolf Loos

  • Amsterdam

  • Portrait of Karl Kraus

  • Couples in Conversation

  • The Last Night

  • Poster Design for the Jubilee Procession of the Kaiser

  • Girl with a Yellow Headband

  • The red egg

  • Female nude seated on the ground

  • Still life with a slaughtered lamb

  • Gitta Wallerstein

  • Loreley

  • Dent du Midi

  • Venice - Boats on the Dogana

  • Two children

  • Venice Dogana

  • Traveler in a Thunderstorm

  • Ludwing Ritter von Janikowsky

  • Man and Woman on the Road to Death

  • Lyon

  • The so-called Savoyard boy

  • Portrait of a Young Girl

  • Self-Portrait with Doll

  • Pieta

  • Conte Verona

  • The Woman Leads the Man

  • Martha Hirsch

  • Self-portrait of a 'Degenerate Artist'

  • Flight into Egypt

  • Self-Portrait (bust with pen)

  • Two Nudes (Lovers)

  • Nude Girl Standing

  • The Annunciation

  • Cardinal della Costa

  • Girl with hands raised

  • The Distant Island

  • Dolomite Landscape: Tre Croci

Views

Kokoschka had no formal training in painting and so approached the medium without regard to the "traditional" or "correct" way to paint. Kokoschka neglected the conventional structured methodologies and theories assumed by art educators, and instead taught through storytelling infused with mythological themes and dramatic emotion.

Kokoschka’s portraits demonstrate the conventions of traditional portraiture, primarily regarding the perspective in which he captures the sitters. However, Kokoschka also adopted elements of the modern style which involved incorporating hands within the composition to further capture the emotion expressed through an individual's gestures.

Quotations: "Consciousness is a sea ringed with visions."

"All that's left now is purely poetic work, putting more life into individual places, as I've made so sure of the fundamental mood and dimension of expression that it won't leave me groping around in uncertainty anymore."

"True dreams and visions should be as visible to the artist as the phenomena of the objective world."

"I used to be too subjective, and I was always tempted to find my inner self in the exterior and dissipate my imagination on other people and on life."

"The most fundamental in me is coming uppermost, and the transient, the sensational, is dispersing, because it can't adversely influence what is essential to me."

"In the midst of the confusions of nature one person trusting eternally in another, and making himself and the other secure through faith."

"Intellectually, I am already an old man. But in the sensory area, I am still such a child! I shuffle on my bottom between the two."

"I try to keep my sitters moving and talking, to make them forget they are being painted. This has nothing to do with extracting intimate secrets or confessions, but rather with establishing, in motion, an essential image of the kind that remains in memory or recurs in dreams."

Interests

• strong belief in omens

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Jan Amos Comenius

• Artists

  Gustav Klimt

Connections

Kokoschka had a passionate, often stormy affair with Alma Mahler. It began in 1912, shortly after the death of her four-year-old daughter Maria Mahler. After several years of their relationships, Alma rejected him, explaining, that she was afraid of being too overcome with passion. In 1941, Oskar married Olda Kokoschka.

Father:

Gustav Josef Kokoschka

Mother:

Maria Romana Kokoschka

Concluding that his father was inadequate, Kokoschka drew closer to his mother.

Wife:

Olda Kokoschka

life partner:

Alma Mahler

Friend:

Adolf Loos

teacher:

Carl Otto Czeschka

Kokoschka was influenced by his teacher Carl Otto Czeschka in developing an original style.

References

• Oskar Kokoschka: Early Portraits from Vienna and Berlin, 1909-1914
  2002
• Oskar Kokoschka
  1991
• Oskar Kokoschka: Letters 1905-1976
  1992
• The Eye of God: A Life of Oskar Kokoschka
  1999