Oskar Kokoschka was born at Pöchlarn on the Danube on 1 March 1886. His father was a Czech and came from a well-known family of Prague goldsmiths. As a boy, Kokoschka wanted to study chemistry, but was recommended for a scholarship at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts by a teacher who had been impressed by his drawings. He entered the school in 1905, the same year in which he commenced painting in oils. In 1908 Kokoschka’s work was shown in the Kunstschau exhibition in Vienna, which featured the avant-garde group around Klimt. His contribution was a source of controversy because of its Expressionist violence, and he was expelled from the school in consequence. He then kept body and soul together by betting on his own capacity to drink visitors to Vienna under the table and obtained portrait commissions from the Modernist architect Adolf Loos. In 1910 Kokoschka went to Berlin and was taken up by Herwarth Walden, owner-editor of Der Sturm, who commissioned him to do title-page drawings for the magazine and used one for almost every issue. He was also given a contract by the dealer Paul Cassirer, who gave him his first one-man exhibition. In 1911 Kokoshka returned to Vienna and was appointed assistant teacher at the very school which had dismissed him. He had a show at the Hagenbund in Vienna and the reception was attended by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who exclaimed: ‘This fellow’s bones ought to be broken in his body!’ In 1911 Kokoschka began an affair with Alma Mahler, widow of the composer. Kokoschka served in the Austro-Hungarian army in the Great War and was severely wounded in 1915, whilst serving on the Eastern Front. The army’s doctors decided he was mentally unstable, nevertheless, he continued to develop his career as an artist, travelling across Europe and painting the landscape. After several years, Alma rejected him, explaining that she was afraid of being too overcome with passion. He loved her all his life, and one of his greatest works The Tempest (Bride of the Wind) is a tribute to her. Deemed a degenerate by the Nazis, Kokoschka fled Austria in 1934 for Prague. There, he founded the Oskar-Kokoschka-Bund with other artists. In 1937 Kokoshka’s work was included in the exhibition of ‘Degenerate Art’ organised by the Nazis in Munich. The works of these artists were confiscated and/or destroyed, and Kokoschka estimated that a third of his works had met their fate in this way. In a later reckoning, the figure of 147 paintings was reached. Kokoschka retaliated by producing a poster which petititioned for the Basque children who were victims of the Nazi attack on Guernica to be given a home in Bohemia. The Prague police tore down the posters for fear of the diplomatic consequences, but overnight, youngsters put up fresh ones. Broadcasting from Breslau, Nazi radio threatened: ‘When we get to Prague, Kokoschka will be strung up from the nearest lamp post.’ In 1938, when the Czechoslovak army mobilised for the impending German invasion, he fled to Britain and remained there throughout the war. With the help of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (later the Czech Refugee Trust Fund), all the members of the OKB escaped through Poland and Sweden. Kokoschka became a British citizen in 1946. He travelled briefly to the United States in 1947, before settling in Switzerland. He ran a summer painting school, the Schule des Sehens (School of Seeing) at Salzburg 1953-63 and designed sets and costumes for the theatre and the opera. His autobiography Mein Leben was published in 1971. Kokoschka’s last years were somewhat embittered, as he found himself marginalised as a curious footnote to art history. His literary works were as peculiar and original as his art. His memoir, A Sea Ringed with Visions, is as wildly psychedelic as anything written by others under the influence of hallucinogens. His short play Murderer, the Hope of Women is often called the first Expressionist drama. His Orpheus und Eurydike (1918) was transformed into an opera by Ernst Krenek. Kokoschka died at Montreux in Switzerland on 22 February 1980. He had much in common with his contemporary Max Beckmann. Both maintained their independence from German Expressionism, yet are now regarded as its supreme masters, who delved deeply into the art of past masters to develop unique individual styles. Their individualism left them both orphaned from the main movements of 20th century Modernism.