Kokoschka, Oskar

(1886–1980)

   One of the 20th century’s most original painters, Kokoschka also drew and wrote poetry. Born to an artisan family in Lower Austria, he studied at the Vienna Academy of Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbeschule); in 1907 he joined the Wiener Werkstätte. A great deal of his productive career developed abroad; his most continuous residence was in Switzerland. By 1910 Kokoschka was working in Berlin, having already dabbled in experimental theater with Murderer, Hope of Women (1909). However it was in the German capital that he became fully at home with the visual Expressionism that was so congenial to the grotesque psychological realism that informs much of his art. From 1919 until 1923, Kokoschka taught at the Dresden Academy and made even more use of the striking colors that had begun appearing in his early work in Austria (Self-Portrait, 1922–1923). He spent 1934–1938 in Prague and World War II in London. In 1953, he returned to Switzerland and to Austria as well, where he founded a School of Visual Art (Schule des Sehens) in Salzburg for summer students.