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.
Accomplishments
- Like many Expressionists, Kokoschka eschewed the harmonious effects of color and form and instead created tempestuous compositions with clashing colors and contorted angles to create an emotional intensity meant to rouse the viewer from bourgeois tedium and conservatism.
- Kokoschka's penchant for portrait painting and self-portraiture was unique among the Expressionists. Kokoschka was less concerned about portraying the physical features of his sitters as realistically as possible and more interested in capturing their, and his, inner psyche through exaggerated features, gestures, and brushstrokes.
- An outspoken critic of the Nazis and Fascism and concerned with the predicaments of refugees from these regimes, Kokoschka believed that art could counter such power, and to this end, he never painted completely abstractly like some of his other avant-garde colleagues. He felt that in order for art to be as powerful as possible it needed to maintain a reference to the concrete world in which we live.
Biography of Oskar Kokoschka
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.
