Oskar Kokoschka Essay, Research Paper
Oskar Kokoschka
Kokoschka was born in P – chlarn, a Danube town, on March 1, 1886. He studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts from 1905 to 1908. As an early advocate of the daring expressionist motion, he began to paint psychologically perforating portrayals of Viennese doctors, designers, and creative persons. Among these plants are Hans Tietze and Erica Tietze-Conrat ( 1909, Museum of Modern Art, New York City ) , August Forel ( 1910, Mannheim Art Gallery, Germany ) , and Self-Portrait ( 1913, Museum of Modern Art ) .
Kokoschka was wounded in World War I ( 1914-1918 ) and diagnosed as psychologically unstable. He taught art at the Dresden Academy from 1919 to 1924. During this clip he painted The Power of Music ( 1919, Dresden Paintings Collection, Dresden ) . A succeeding seven-year period of travel in Europe and the Middle East resulted in a figure of robust, brightly colored landscapes and figure pieces, painted with great freedom and exuberance. Many of them are positions of seaports, mountains, and metropoliss.
Kokoschka, one of the creative persons denounced by the Nazi authorities of Germany as pervert, moved in 1938 to England, where he painted antiwar images during World War II ( 1939-1945 ) and became a British topic in 1947. After the war he visited the United States and settled in Switzerland. He died in Montreux on February 22, 1980. Best known as a painter, Kokoschka was besides a author. His literary plants include poesy and plays non translated into English and a aggregation of short narratives, A Sea Ringed with Visions ( 1956 ; translated 1962 ) .
His male parent was a silverworker from Prague who experienced fiscal troubles when the market for such handcrafted goods dried out with mass industrialisation. Oskar ’ s exposure to his male parent ’ s workmanship, nevertheless, was said to play a big portion in his art and enthusiasm for workmanship.
In 1908, a book called The Dreaming Youths was published, and it featured illustrations by Kokoschka. They were done in a manner that was indebted to Gustav Klimt, whose Secession group was traveling strong at the clip. Kokoschka was learning at the School of Arts and Crafts where he had studied himself under Franz Cizek. Cizek was among the first to acknowledge the immature creative person ’ s endowments.
In Vienna, Kokoschka wrote plaies such as The Assassin, Murderer, and The Hope of Women ; and they, along with his art, were considered excessively extremist for the nobility. Despite support from architect Adolf Loos and good reaction from his engagement in the 1908 and 1909 exhibits at the Kunstschau, Vienna was non sort to Kokoschka. In 1910, he moved to Berlin.
In Berlin, he got the aid of Herwarth Walden, the laminitis and editor of the art diary Der Sturm and a advocate of Expressionism. Until the beginning of World War I, Kokoschka painted portrayals of German ( and Austrian ) clerisy in a manner he called “ black picture, ” as they, in his words, “ painted the psyche ’ s dirtiness. ” His portrayal of poet Peter Altenberg, made in 1909, has the figure about intermixing into the frame ’ s Expressionist background ; and his portra
its of Count Verona, Joseph de Montesquiou-Ferendac and Walden himself are casebook illustrations of the Expressionist, twirling, Van Gough-like images that evoked a sense of degeneracy.
Between 1912 and 1914, Kokoschka had a relationship with Alma Mahler, the widow of composer Gustav Mahler. She was a adult female of great influence who had inspired no less than poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and was involved besides with Bauhaus laminitis Walter Gropius. After World War I broke out, Kokoschka volunteered for the Imperial and Royal 15th Dragoons, and in 1915 he was sent to the forepart, where he was earnestly injured. He was hospitalized several times in both Vienna and Stockholm and was discharged from military service in 1916.
In 1919, he was appointed to a chair at the Dresden Academy, and when he left the Academy in 1924 he traveled for a decennary through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. He so stayed a piece in the artistic one-fourth of Paris, but he ne’er felt at place in that environment. Finally, he returned to Vienna, where he completed Vienna, View From the Wilhelminberg for the Vienna Municipal Council.
In 1934, Kokoschka moved to Prague after being alarmed by political developments in Germany and Austria. There he met Olda Pavlovska, who would subsequently go his married woman, and besides Thomas Masaryk, the first president of the Czech Republic. In Prague, he voiced his displeasure with the Nazi government in Germany ; and as a consequence, his work was considered “ devolve art ” by the Nazis. When Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and occupied Czechoslovakia that same twelvemonth, Kokoschka fled to England with Olda.
Kokoschka sold and donated many of his plants on behalf of human-centered causes every bit good as establishing a posting run in 1945. It featured a lithographed posting that read, “ In memory of the kids of Europe who have to decease of cold and hungriness this Christmas. ”
Every summer from 1953 to 1963, he taught at the Salzburg School of Seeing, where he presented his thoughts of look via the senses. He continued his human-centered work every bit good as exhibiting his work in Basel, New York and Venice. Kokoschka and Olda settled eventually in Switzerland, where he lived until his decease in 1980.
Most writers will state prospective authors to “ compose what you know. ” My feeling of Kokoschka is that he did merely that. He was tormented for most of his life. He wrote his male parent in 1922 stating, “ I believe, in all earnestness, that I am now the best painter on earth. ”
He wrote to the people of Dresden non to hold their “ war ” in forepart of the art gallery and traveled more than any other creative person known at the clip. I don ’ t happen his picture or his Hagiographas really settling and highly missing in deepness.
Schroder, Klaus A, et Al ( October, 1991 ) , Oskar Kokoschka, International Book Import Service, Inc. , Austria/NY.
Weidinger, Alfred, et Al. ( September, 1996 ) , Kokoschka and Alma Mahler: Testimony to a
Passionate Relationship, International Book Import Service, Austria/NY.
Winkler, Johann ( August, 1997 ) , Oskar Kokoschka, International Book Import Service, Austria/NY
