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Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.
Kokoschka's literary works are as peculiar and interesting as his art. His memoir, A Sea Ringed with Visions, is as wildly psychedelic as anything written by others. His short play "Murderer, the Hope of Women" (1909, set ten years later by Paul Hindemith as Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen) is often called the first Expressionist drama. His Orpheus und Eurydike (1918) became an opera by Ernst Krenek, who was first approached for incidental music.