Famous Austrians VIII: Oskar Kokoschka

Woman with Parrot

The Expressionist painter and playwright Oskar Kokoschka was born in Pöchlarn, Lower Austria, in 1886 and is known outside Austria mostly for his portraits and landscapes, and sometimes for his affair with composer Gustav Mahler's wife Alma.


Kokoschka's family moved to Vienna when he was a boy, and while in school, he began to paint, developing an interest in the works of Van Gogh. He also emulated the Jugendstil (art nouveau) styles. He served in the Austrian army during World War I and wounded by a bayonette stuck into his lung while on the Ukranian front. In the hospital, doctors decided he was mentally unstable. When he was dismissed from the army in 1916, he traveled around Europe to continue painting, landing in Dresden in 1917. 

Dresden Neustadt

In 1931 he came back to Vienna, only to move to Prague in 1934 to escape the Nazis (he was considered a degenerate artist, an entartete Künstler by the regime). In 1938, when Hitler came to the Czech Republic, Kokoschka moved to London, where he was an active member of Young Austria, a group of exiled Austrians living in England and waiting out the the end of World War II. 


After the war, Kokoschka made it to Switzerland, where he lived out the rest of his life. The Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna (close to my apartment, actually!) has a permanent exhibit of his work.

Although he's oft-copied in Vienna (not as much as Klimt, dear God), I really enjoy Kokoschka's paintings for their bright colors and quasi-dreamscapes. Similar to my feelings about the Blaue Reiter, I think I will have to snag Franz Marc's comment about art being a continuation of our dreams. Just paraphrasing.