In 1908, a book called The Dreaming Youths was published, and it featured illustrations by Kokoschka. They were done in a style that was indebted to Gustav Klimt, whose Secession group was going strong at the time. Kokoschka was teaching at the School of Arts and Crafts where he had studied himself under Franz Cizek. Cizek was among the first to recognize the young artist's talents.
In Vienna. Kokoschka wrote dramas such as The Assassin, Murderer, and The Hope of Women; and they, along with his art, were considered too radical for the aristocracy. Despite support from architect Adolf Loos and good reaction from his participation in the 1908 and 1909 exhibits at the Kunstschau, Vienna was not kind to Kokoschka. In 1910, he moved to Berlin.
In Berlin, he got the help of Herwarth Walden, the founder and editor of the art journal Der Sturm and a proponent of Expressionism. Until the outset of World War I, Kokoschka painted portraits of German (and Austrian) intelligentsia in a style he called "black painting," as they, in his words, "painted the soul's dirtiness." His portrait of poet Peter Altenberg, made in 1909, has the figure almost blending into the frame's Expressionist background; and his portraits of Count Verona, Joseph de Montesquiou-Ferendac and Walden himself are textbook examples of the Expressionist, swirling, Van Gough-like images that evoked a sense of decadence.
Between 1912 and 1914, Kokoschka had a relationship with Alma Mahler, the widow of composer Gustav Mahler. She was a woman of great influence who had inspired no less than poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and was involved also with Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. After World War I broke out, Kokoschka volunteered for the Imperial and Royal 15th Dragoons, and in 1915 he was sent to the front, where he was seriously injured. He was hospitalized several times in both Vienna and Stockholm and was discharged from military service in 1916.
In 1919, he was appointed to a professorship at the Dresden Academy, and when he left the Academy in 1924 he traveled for a decade through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. He then stayed a while in the artistic quarter of Paris, but he never felt at home in that environment. Eventually, he returned to Vienna, where he completed Vienna, View From the Wilhelminberg for the Vienna Municipal Council.
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