Kurt "Kappa" Kocherscheidt

(Klagenfurt 1943 - 1992 Wels)
The Austrian painter and sculptor Kurt Kocherscheidt was born on 6 July 1943 in Klagenfurt. While at the beginning of his artistic career he mainly explored the depiction of landscapes, he later developed his own style in his powerfully painted geometric figures. Kocherscheidt was very successful as an artist as he died on 13 November 1992.
After finishing school in Klagenfurt, Kocherscheidt studied from 1961 to 1965 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Professor Sergius Pauser and at the Academy in Zagreb under Professor Ivo Rezek. Together with Wolfgang Herzig, Martha Jungwirth, Peter Pongratz, Franz Ringel and Robert Zeppel-Sperl, he founded the artists' association " Wirklichkeiten " (Realities) in 1968 on the initiative of Otto Breicha. They gained public attention with an exhibition at the Vienna Secession in the same year. In 1969, Kocherscheidt moved to London for two years, where he adopted the artist's name "Kappa" as the pronunciation of his name was difficult in English. He used this new term immediately in his signature. From 1985 he changed his signature once more to only a "K". He expressed his passion for the tropics and Africa with the portfolio of 15 etchings entitled "Kocherscheidts erweiterertes Tierleben", published in 1969. In 1972 he undertook a one-year journey through South America, on which he produced a large number of drawings. Immediately after his return he met the photographer Elfie Semotan, whom he married in the autumn of the same year. Kocherscheidt worked until the end of the 1970s with various mixed techniques, such as dispersion on canvas, oil chalk or tempera. After his severe bypass operation in 1978 and his subsequent stay in a studio at the Morat Institute on the Ligurian coast in Savona, he began with painting in oil. His further travels took him to California and Mexico. A fifty-sheet watercolour cycle "El bananero enamorado" was created in 1992 on the island of La Gomera. At the Morat Institute in Freiburg im Breisgau, a permanent presentation of Kocherscheidt's paintings was set up same year in one of the exhibition halls. In October he produced the six-metre-high wooden sculpture "Tor der Winde" (Gate of the Winds) on the Greek island of Syros, before dying very young in Wels on 13 November 1992 due to heart failure. His first solo exhibition take place at Galerie Hildebrand, Klagenfurt in 1968. Kocherscheidt's works are shown at the 21er Haus in Vienna (1986), at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst in Gent (1991), at the Vienna Secession (1992), at Documenta IX in Kassel (1992), at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg (2013), and at the Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck in Remagen (2013). In 1988 Kocherscheidt is awarded the Austrian Art Prize for Fine Arts.

Would you like to sell?

Do you own a work by this artist that you would like to sell?

Works

not available
Grünocker III, 1992
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991
not available
o. T., 1991

Exhibitions

Judith Reigl and Kurt Kocherscheidt
25. September - 20. October 2018
Kurt Kocherscheidt
22. November 2017 - 26. January 2018