Emil Kosa Jr. was the career man and jack-of-all-trades artist of California Scene painting. Born the son of a Czechoslovakian artist in Paris, France, Kosa was trained in visual arts and music early in life. Kosa studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and found something like home while attending the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and Otis Art Institute, where he began teaching in the late 1920s. He also maintained business in mural and decorative painting and the entertainment industry to support his family before taking on a thirty-five year career as a special effects artist for Twentieth Century Fox studios.

In the 1920s, his friendship with Millard Sheets shifted his artistic priorities. From then onward, no matter what professional endeavors were on the horizon, he helped to create the "California Style" in watercolor. He fervently pursued the advancement of watercolor as a medium, and his compulsive painting schedule and gallery presence bolstered the movement's national and international strength.  Kosa Jr. remained devoted to depicting regional subjects for the rest of his life, and was an active member of the Laguna Beach community as an art teacher. 

Amazingly, Kosa's broad skill set allowed him to excel in a number of trades. Although he is best known for his representational watercolors and oils, he also won awards for pencil drawings and pastels depicting figurative subjects and prints. During the 1940s and through the mid-1960s, he sporadically returned to abstraction, and produced may works that expressed his love for music and experimental art concepts. His won an Oscar for set special effects on Cleopatra in 1964. Museums that house Kosa' LACMA, the Santa Barbara Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the San Diego Museum. 

California Scene Painting Timeline
1920s: Received traditional painting instruction from Pierre Laurens and learned abstract painting from Frank Kupka in Paris, France.
1928: Settled in California, sold artwork through galleries and commissions while working as mural artist and decorative painter.
1930: Kosa became friends with Millard Sheets, began pursuing career in California Style watercolor painting and advocacy
1945: Serves as president of the California Water Color Society
1950s: Known as the premier portrait painter in Southern California, paints official portrait of Earl Warren from this era [now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.].
1964, won an Oscar for the movie, Cleopatra.