Kokoschka, Oskar (Painter)
(3/1/1886 Pöchlarn/Austria – 2/22/1980 Villeneuve by Montreux/Switzerland)
Painter, commercial artist, poet. Studied and worked in Vienna, became through the assistance of the Berlin magazine "The Storm" an important representative of expressionism. Although lesser known than his paintings, his plays are considered to be pioneering efforts toward expressionistic drama ("The Sphinx and the Stooge" 1907, "Hiob" 1917; "Murderer, Hope of the Women" 1909; "The Burning Thorn Bush" 1911; "Orpheus and Eurydice" 1915)
Starting from 1913, Kokoschka along with Karl Kraus and the architect Adolf Loos are the artists with whom Trakl visited during his Vienna stays. He described his relationship with Trakl while painting "The Wind Bride,” whose title he derived from the Trakl poem "The Night".
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Following WW I, Kokoschka worked as a professor at the academy in Dresden until 1923, after which he traveled extensively and created a large cycle of city pictures, then because of the Nazi rise to power emigrates through Prague to London. In 1953 he created the "School of Seeing" in Salzburg as an international summer academy and established himself in Villeneuve. His autobiography "My Life" appeared in 1971.