Kokoschka: The Untimely Modernist

Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was an artist of his time, but he also stood out among his peers - not just because of his towering physical height but for his artistic range: he wrote plays and stories as well as essays on art and politics. Using both brush and pen to work against the tide, he played a major role in shaping European art in the twentieth century. A rebel of the art world, he was used to controversy, and Ru diger Goerner's accomplished biography weaves the dark, unsettling aspects of Kokoschka's life among his more celebrated achievements: from the eerie doll he had made in the image of a former lover to the unconventional art school he founded in the aftermath of war. Taking us from his birthplace of Poechlarn across Europe and to the United Kingdom, where he became a naturalised British citizen in 1947, this first English-language biography does more than show Kokoschka as a maverick artist; it is the definitive interpretation of an extraordinary life.