Oskar Kokoschka
Austrian Painter, Printmaker, Draftsman, Sculptor, Poet, and Playwright
Movements and Styles: Expressionism, Modern Sculpture
Born: March 1, 1886 - Pöchlarn, Austria
Died: February 22, 1980 - Montreux, Switzerland
Table of contents
> Summary> Key Ideas
> Artworks
> Biography & Legacy
Influences and Connections
Resources
"Painting...isn't based on three dimensions, but on four. The fourth dimension is a projection of myself....The other three dimensions are based on the vision of both eyes...the fourth dimension is based on the essential nature of vision, which is creative."
Summary of Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka moved daringly from a more decorative style into a bold, racy Expressionism. He came of age during turn-of-the-century Vienna, exploring Sigmund Freud's analysis of dreams and the unconscious as well as giving voice to the growing anxiety felt among the bourgeois class about the modern age. His disorienting compositions used bold brushstrokes and strong colors to confront the viewer. His freedom from stylistic constraint as well as his belief in the power of art to raise awareness of contemporary problems set an example for artists from the Abstract Expressionists in the mid-20th century to the Neo-Expressionists of the late-20th century.
Key Ideas
Oskar Kokoschka was born in 1886 in Pöchlarn, a small town on the Danube, 100 kilometers west of Vienna. His father Gustav, from a German patrician family of goldsmiths, was a travelling salesman and, his mother Maria Romana (née Loidl) was a forester's daughter from the state of Styria in south east Austria. When asked about his childhood Kokoschka said that he was a very happy child and that his father gave him books which formed him as a man and an artist. Among these were an abbreviated version of the Odyssey and the Orbis Sensualium Pictus, a 1658 textbook for children written by Czech educator John Amos Comenius. From these his appreciation for classical literature and the arts began.
Important Art by Oskar Kokoschka | |
 Artwork Images | Selection from The Dreaming Boys (or The Dreaming Youths) (1907-08)Artwork description & Analysis: This illustrated book with eight photolithographs was originally commissioned by the financier of the Wiener Werkstätte as a fairy tale for his children. But the resulting work, The Dreaming Boys, audaciously flouts the genre. Instead, Kokoschka's stream-of-conscious narrative poem tells of the sexual awakening of a young, unnamed boy and the heroine Li. Set in an imaginary forest populated by birds and animals, Kokoschka writes of love, sex, and violent fantasies in which reality and the subconscious blend. The eternal themes of Eros and death, as well as dreams and the unconscious, were subjects made more popular around 1900 thanks to the Viennese father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. Kokoschka revealed that the story was autobiographical, writing, "The book was my first love letter. But she had already gone out of my life by the time it appeared." The young woman was Kokoschka's classmate Lillith Lang, who he often sketched and who was exploring dream imagery in her own work. Illustrated book with eight photolithographs and three line block prints, edition of 500 - Museum of Modern Art, New York |
 Artwork Images | Self-portrait as Warrior (1909)Artwork description & Analysis: Created just a year after The Dreaming Boys, Kokoschka's Self-portrait as Warrior declares his break with Jugendstijl and decorative arts and affirms his commitment to an expressionistic art. The artist subverts the traditional form of the portrait bust by presenting distorted, suffering features. It is as if Kokoschka pulled back his own skin to reveal raw nerves and flesh. The thickly modeled clay, with incised lines, would find its counterpart in his portrait paintings from this same time. Kokoschka remarked of the striations in the clay, "Seeing a Polynesian mask with its incised tattooing, I understood at once, because I could feel my own facial nerves reacting to cold and hunger in the same way." Unfired clay painted with tempera - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
 Artwork Images | Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat (1909)Artwork description & Analysis: Kokoschka depicts his subjects, prominent Viennese art historians Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat who were supporters of contemporary art, not so much as they actually looked but how he understood their psyches. He described his friends as "closed personalities so full of tension." The figures do not face each other, and Erica's posture with her arms across her chest further divides her from her husband. The two stare off into different distances, not even looking at the viewer. This trance-like state separates each from the other and from the viewer. Their exaggerated and distorted hands are about to touch or have just touched, creating an electrified tension. The hands, with their long, sinewy fingers and odd colors also convey a sense of nervousness, or uncertainty. Oil on canvas - Museum of Modern Art, New York |
More Oskar Kokoschka Artwork and Analysis:
Influences and Connections
Artists
| Personal Contacts
| Movements
|
Influences on Artist
Artists
| Personal Contacts | Movements
|
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Artist Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
Available from:
First published on 21 Nov 2017. Updated and modified regularly. 
[Accessed ]
