Charming and very charismatic self portrait of the celebrated Austrian artist, poet and playwrightOskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) who was best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.

Brief Bio:

Deemed a degenerate by the Nazis, Kokoschka fled Austria in 1934 for Prague. In Prague his name was adopted by a group of other expatriate artists, the Oskar-Kokoschka-Bund (OKB), though he declined to otherwise participate. In 1938, when the Czechs began to mobilize for the expected invasion of the German army he fled to the United Kingdom and remained there during the war. With the help of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Refugee Trust Fund), all members of the OKB were able to escape through Poland and Sweden.

During World War II, Kokoschka and his wife lived in Ullapool, a village in Wester Ross, Scotland for several summer months. There he drew with coloured pencil (a technique he developed in Scotland), and painted many local landscape views in watercolour.

Kokoschka became a British citizen in 1946 and would only regain Austrian citizenship in 1978. He travelled briefly to the United States in 1947 before settling in Switzerland, where he lived the rest of his life. He died in Montreux on 22 February 1980.

Kokoschka had much in common with his contemporary Max Beckmann. Both maintained their independence from German Expressionism, yet are now regarded as textbook examples of the style. Nonetheless, their individualism set both apart from the main movements of Twentieth Century modernism. Both wrote eloquently of the need to develop the art of "seeing" (Kokoschka emphasized depth perception while Beckmann was concerned with mystical insight into the invisible realm), and both were masters of innovative oil-painting techniques anchored in earlier traditions.

This is a highly collectable piece and looks very fine.

The frame and print show signs of age consistant with age

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