Kokoschka, Oscar
The well-known Austrian painter, Oscar Kokoschka, was a fierce critic of Nazi anti-Semitism and of the victimisation of intellectuals and artists.
Profession: Painter, Anti-Nazi Activist
Country of Origin: Austria
Country of Asylum: Czech Republic
Country of Transit: United Kingdom; Switzerland
Date of birth: 1 March 1886
Born in Pochlarn, Austria, Kokoschka enrolled in 1904 in the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, but was expelled from the college because his work was considered too controversial. He also wrote plays that caused public outcry at the time.
During World War I, he served in the Austrian cavalry, then settled in Dresden, where he taught at the art academy. From 1924 to 1930, he travelled across Europe and produced his famous landscapes. As early as 1933, he resigned from his teaching post at the Prussian Academy of Art to protest the expulsion of Jewish artists.
Kokoschka moved to Prague in 1934. Three years later, the German government began its campaign against what it called “degenerate art” and eight of Kokoschka’s paintings featured in a travelling exhibition of the same name in 1937. The Nazis proceeded to confiscate thousands of works of art, including 417 of Kokoschka’s pieces. In response, he painted “Self-Portrait as a Degenerate Artist” (1937).
When Czechoslovakia came under threat from Hitler, Kokoschka fled to England with his wife Olda Palkovsky. In London, he was active in anti-Nazi cultural organisations such as the newly-founded Free German League of Culture, of which he became President in 1941.
While German exiles were interned in British camps, Kokoschka’s Czech citizenship spared him detention, allowing him to assume a public role as a spokesperson for exiles. In 1947, he became a British citizen. He returned briefly to Vienna after the war, but refused to live there. He settled in Switzerland but ran a summer school called School for Seeing, in Salzburg, Austria from 1953-63. Kokoschka died February 22, 1980 in Villeneuve, Switzerland.