The following text was written and submitted by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher of Laguna Woods, California:

Oscar Kokoschka, the son of a fairly poor Czech goldsmith, was born in 1886 in Pochlam, Austria and raised in Vienna, the great hothouse of modernism in economic, social and ethnic areas. By the time he was twenty-two he was labeled a "public terror". He was the "enfant terrible" of Viennese Expressionism as early as 1907. He first caused an uproar at an 1908 exhibition in Vienna; he became so controversial that he fled to Berlin in 1909. His contact with German expressionists there helped deepen his art.

"Kokoschka had an extraordinary life which is mirrored in his art.&n...