Biography
Born in Pöchlarn, Austria, in 1886, Oskar Kokoschka’s early life was made difficult by his miserly father, constantly moving to ever smaller flats. Against his father’s will, he applied to the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Vienna, being selected over 150 others. There he developed a unique and original style whilst studying under various members of the Vienna Secession. In 1912 he began a passionate affair with Alma Mahler, to whom his famous Bride of the Wind, 1915, is dedicated. He volunteered for the Austrian army at the outbreak of the First World War, but was seriously wounded in 1915. Persecuted as a degenerate by the Nazis, he fled to Prague in 1934, and then to Britain during the Second World War. While living in Scotland, he painted watercolours of the landscape around him. After the war he moved to Switzerland, where he died in Montreux in 1980, at the age of 93.
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