Painting School of Kokoschka in Hohensalzburg
Watercolours in the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts
Oct 5, 2009
Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980), the Austrian expressionist, was among the most important and often controversial artists of the 20th century. Having fled Austria and the Nazis in 1934, Kokoschka returned to his home country in the 1950s and set up a painting school: his famous School of Seeing, 1953-1963. Kokoschka's painting school operated under the auspices of the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, located in Hohensalzburg, one of Europe’s largest castles.
Kokoschka’s Painting School of Seeing in Hohensalzburg
The International Summer Academy of Fine Arts attracted students from all over the world. By 1963, Kokoschka taught over 300 students from thirty different countries in Hohensalzburg. The medieval castle of Salzburg is one of the largest and best preserved in Europe and commands spectacular views of the city. At Kokoschka’s time the painting school filled three floors and classes were organized according to language with the most numerous German group occupying two studios on the top floor.
Kokoschka taught in German, French, English and Italian. His main aim was teaching people to see. “My school does not strive towards technical skill, nor towards photographic imitations of nature, and not at all towards abstract art”, Kokoschka said in one of his lectures. “I want to teach my students the art of vision”. The medium was watercolour.
Oskar Kokoschka as Teacher
Kokoschka students in 1950s and 1960s Hohensalzburg remember Kokoschka as a messianic figure, “like a ship” coming in the class with “everything flapping like sails”. He was a poetic speaker with a contagious enthusiasm who liked to improvise and surprise his students. As a teacher, Kokoschka was not interested in technical questions but responded emotionally “guided by a sense of artistic form”.
Inge Althöfer, née Raschig, student of Kokoschka in his International Summer School of Fine Arts in 1959, remembers him as a strict but friendly teacher who wanted to teach his students how to see: he wanted them to look at the light, at the colours, at the whole environment surrounding the model, at the model itself and the model’s personality. He often rewarded them with sweets. They always used watercolour.
Watercolour in Kokoschka’s Painting School
Kokoschka believed that the surrounding world was in constant flux and for that reason would have a model move continuously. Watercolour was the best medium to capture the moment. Students had “to hit the right note in a spontaneous way”, remembers Henry Schwartz. They were encouraged to use wet brushes and often produced more than 30 watercolours in a day. In his painting school Kokoschka was not interested in finished works but in making his students understand the art of seeing and the essence of the object they painted.
Inge Althöfer has used watercolour extensively, mostly by drawing the human figure but also in landscapes. She remembers the occasion when the future Queen of Denmark visited Hohensalzburg and Kokoschka’s painting school. Inge Althöfer’s watercolour of a view of Salzburg from the castle was judged the best in her class in 1959.
Sources
James Toub, "Oskar Kokoschka as Teacher", Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 28, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 35-49.
Interview with Inge Althöfer, Dusseldorf, 26 July 2009.
On Oskar Kokoschka see text from Edward Lucie-Smiths's, Lives of the Great 20th-century Artists in the Art Archive.
Watercolours reproduced with permission from artist, Inge Althöfer. Photograph of Kokoschka from the private collection of Inge Althöfer, reproduced with permission
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