Oskar Kokoschka

Art Brokerage: Oskar Kokoschka Austrian Artist: b. 1886-1980. Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright, and teacher best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expressionist movement. In 1908 Kokoschka was offered the opportunity of submitting works to the first Vienna Kunstschau.This government funded exhibition was established to both bring in tourists and affirm Vienna's prominence within the art world. Kokoschka received a commission from the Director of the Wiener Werkstätte, Fritz Wärndorfer, for color images that would supplement a children's book and be displayed at the exhibition. Kokoschka, however, took the liberty of producing images that would serve as illustrations to the poem he wrote a year earlier, Die träumenden Knaben (The Dreaming Youths), which took on the form of an autobiographical adolescent fantasy that was much too inappropriate for a young audience. In his autobiography, Kokoschka explained the origins of the poem which follow his personal experience as a young student who was in love with his Swedish classmate, Lilith.[Die träumenden Knaben consists of introductory pages with two small black and white lithographs, in addition to eight larger color lithographs with a vertical column of text positioned beside each image. Influenced by the compositions found in medieval art, Kokoschka depicted various moments in time simultaneously within each individual image. Kokoschka also adopted the bold lines and expressive colors of traditional European folk art and juxtaposed them with the stylized ornamentation and two-dimensional bodies of Jugendstil. The final page, titled Das Mädchen Li und ich (the Girl Li and I), features the angular forms of the young boy (Kokoschka) and girl (Lilith), taking on the style of the Belgian sculptor George Minne. This work, which Kokoschka dedicated to his former teacher Gustav Klimt, demonstrates the transition from Jugendstil to Expressionism. Oskar Kokoschka painted a bulk of his portraiture between 1909 and 1914. Unlike many of his contemporaries who were also receiving portrait commissions, such as Edvard Munch, Kokoschka maintained complete artistic freedom because they were generally not ordered directly by the sitter. A majority of Kokoschka's subjects were clients of the architect Loos, and it was Loos who ordered the portraits and agreed to purchase them if the sitter chose not to. Other portraits by Kokoschka feature friends and advocates within his circle who supported the modern art of this period. Prominent members of this group who had their portraits painted include the art dealer Herwarth Walden, art supporter Lotte Franzos, poet Peter Altenberg, and art historians Hans and Erica Tietze. Kokoschka's portraits demonstrate the conventions of traditional portraiture, primarily regarding the perspective in which he captures the sitters. However, Kokoschka also adopted elements of the modern style which involved incorporating hands within the composition to further capture the emotion expressed through an individual's gestures. These portraits also utilize the unconscious positioning of the sitter's body, which Kokoschka believed would unveil the inner tensions of their subconscious. Listings wanted. Must be accompanied by good paperwork.