Oskar Kokoschka was born in 1886 in the Lower Austrian community of Pöchlarn on the Danube. He studied painting at the School of Applied Arts at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna. In 1907 he became a member of the Wiener Werkstätte, which he left again in 1909 under the influence of his friend and mentor Adolf Loos.
Through Loos, Kokoschka got to know Herwarth Walden, the editor of the magazine "Der Sturm" and later founder of the gallery of the same name. This led to a fruitful artistic collaboration with Walden. Both his magazine and his gallery were important for the spread of Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism. From 1912 onwards, Kokoschka became known abroad.
In the same year he met Alma Mahler. From this acquaintance developed an unbridled amour fou. Kokoschka's most famous painting, the "Windsbraut" (Bride of the Wind), bears witness to this passionate period. During the First World War he went to the front as a volunteer, where he was seriously wounded by a bayonet thrust.
From 1917 to 1923 Kokoschka lived in Dresden. His professorship at the Dresden Academy was only partially filled due to his many journeys. In 1937 the exhibition "Degenerate Art" was opened inMunich's Haus der Kunst, where eight works by Oskar Kokoschka were publicly denounced. In 1938 Kokoschka fled from National Socialism to London and became a British citizen in 1947. After the war he received numerous honours and took part in many important exhibitions. In July 1953 Kokoschka was the first to head the "School of Seeing" at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg. Oskar Kokoschka died in 1980 in Villeneuve on Lake Geneva.
