Oskar Kokoschka
Viennese expressionist who painted his sitters as though he could see through them.
Oskar Kokoschka was born at Pochlarn in Austria in 1886 and was notorious in Vienna before he was twenty-five, both for the psychological portraits and for the play Murderer, the Hope of Women. The affair with Alma Mahler produced The Bride of the Wind and, after it ended, the life-size doll he had made in her likeness. He was severely wounded in the First World War, was condemned as degenerate and fled to Prague and then to London, taking British citizenship, and spent the later decades painting panoramic city views from high windows across Europe. He died in Switzerland in 1980, at ninety-three.
The market divides between the early Viennese portraits, which are scarce and are the works the reputation rests on, and the later landscapes and city views, which are far more numerous. Both are unique oils. There is a substantial graphic output — lithographs, etchings and illustrated books, much of it from the Vienna years and some of it published in significant editions. Provenance for anything with a pre-1945 Central European history requires care, as restitution questions are live for this generation. The signature is usually the monogram OK.
If you own a work by Oskar Kokoschka
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