Oskar Kokoschka

pseudonym: -

birth data

date of birth: 1886

place of birth: Pöchlarn

death data

date of death: 1980

death: Montreux

biography

The Austrain artist Oskar Kokoschka was born on 1 March 1886 in Pöchlarn in Lower Austria. In 1904 Kokoschka began his studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Vienna and became a member of the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops) while still a student. In 1908 the artist exhibited designs for tapestries, drawings and gouaches at the Kunstschau, organised by the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte. During World War I Kokoschka was badly injured. In 1919 he received a professorship at the Art Academy in Dresden. His various travels took him to France, Switzerland, England, Spain, Italy, the Near East and to North Africa. In the face of the threatening political events of the Nazi era Kokoschka fled from Vienna to England via Prague. As a reaction to the Degenerate Art exhibition, at which eight of his works were shown, Kokoschka painted the work Self-Portrait as a Degenerate Artist in 1937. Oskar Kokoschka was granted British citizenship in 1947. Through his oeuvre Kokoschka is considered one of the most important representatives of Expressionism and Viennese Modernist art. His psychologising portraits, religious subjects and motifs from Antiquity are among his most important groups of works. After the war Kokoschka withdrew to Villeneuve on Lake Geneva and died on 22 February 1980 in Montreux.