The painter who turned Hohensalzburg Fortress into an art school. Oskar Kokoschka, one of the great Expressionist painters of the 20th century, founded the Schule des Sehens (School of Vision) at the fortress in 1953 as part of the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts. Every summer, artists from across the world gathered at the fortress to study under his intensely humanistic, anti-abstract approach to painting.
His portraits, raw and vibrating with psychological intensity, helped define how Expressionism depicted inner life. The International Summer Academy at the Fortress (now the Internationale Sommerakademie fur Bildende Kunst) remains one of Salzburg's living cultural institutions.
