Ernst Fuchs (artist) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Ernst Fuchs is an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

, stage designer, composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, singer and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. It includes Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Fritz Janschka, all students of Professor Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts...

. In 1972 he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner

Otto Koloman Wagner was an Austrian architect and urban planner, known for his lasting impact on the appearance of his home town Vienna, to which he contributed many landmarks.-Life:...

Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed. The villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988.

Life and work

He studied sculpture with Emmy Steinbock (1943), attended the St. Anna Painting School where he studied under Professor Fröhlich

Fröhlich

Fröhlich is a German language surname meaning cheerful. It may refer to:* Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich, German evangelist, theologian and writer* Adolf Froelich, Polish inventor, dentist and officer* Albrecht Fröhlich, German Jewish mathematician...

(1944), and entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (1945) where he began his studies under Professor Robin C. Anderson, later moving to the class of Albert Paris von Gütersloh.

At the Academy he met Arik Brauer

Arik Brauer

Arik Brauer is an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer and stage designer. He resides in Vienna and Ein Hod, Israel. Brauer is a co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, together with Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden.Erich...

, Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. Hausner has been described as a "psychic realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter" .-Early life:...

, Wolfgang Hutter

Wolfgang Hutter

Wolfgang Hutter is a painter, draughtsman, printmaker and stage designer. Hutter's imagery is characterised by an artificial paradise of gardens and fantastical fairytale-like scenes....

, and Anton Lehmden

Anton Lehmden

Anton Lehmden is an Austrian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Lehmden was a co-founder, together with Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Arik Brauer and Wolfgang Hutter, of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism...

, together with whom he later founded what has become known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

. He was also a founding member of the Art-Club

Art-Club

Art-Club was an association of artists during the postwar period in Vienna, Austria, in 1946–1959.-History:Art-Club was formed with the intention of fighting for the autonomy of modern art. This rather late standpoint in art history should be viewed in the light of the conditions dictated by Nazi...

(1946), as well as the Hundsgruppe, set up in opposition to it in 1951, together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser was an Austrian painter and architect. Born Friedrich Stowasser in Vienna, he became one of the best-known contemporary Austrian artists, although controversial, by the end of the 20th century.-Life:Hundertwasser's father Ernst Stowasser died three...

and Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer , is an Austrian painter and is internationally renowned for his abstract informal art.In his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism...

.

His work of this period was influenced by the art of Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...

and Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter. A protégé of Gustav Klimt, Schiele was a major figurative painter of the early 20th century. His work is noted for its intensity, and the many self-portraits the artist produced...

and then by Max Pechstein

Max Pechstein

Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...

, Heinrich Campendonck, Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.- Childhood :Edvard Munch...

, Henry Moore

Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....

and Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

. During this time, seeking to achieve the vivid lighting effects achieved by such Old Masters as Albrecht Altdorfer

Albrecht Altdorfer

Albrecht Altdorfer was a German painter, printmaker and architect of the Renaissance era.-Biography:Altdorfer was born in Regensburg or Altdorf around 1480....

, Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer

Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...

, Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald

Matthias Grünewald or "Mathis" , "Gothart" or "Neithardt" , , was a German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century.Only ten paintings—several consisting...

and Martin Schongauer

Martin Schongauer

Martin Schongauer was a German engraver and painter. He was the most important German printmaker before Albrecht Dürer....

, he revived and adopted the mischtechnik (mixed technique) of painting. In the mischtechnik, egg tempera is used to build up volume, and is then glazed with oil paints

Oil painting

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...

mixed with resin

Resin

Resin in the most specific use of the term is a hydrocarbon secretion of many plants, particularly coniferous trees. Resins are valued for their chemical properties and associated uses, such as the production of varnishes, adhesives, and food glazing agents; as an important source of raw materials...

, producing a jewel-like effect.

Between 1950 and 1961, Fuchs lived mostly in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and made a number of journeys to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

and Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. His favourite reading material at the time was the sermons of Meister Eckhart

Meister Eckhart

Eckhart von Hochheim O.P. , commonly known as Meister Eckhart, was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic, born near Gotha, in the Landgraviate of Thuringia in the Holy Roman Empire. Meister is German for "Master", referring to the academic title Magister in theologia he obtained in Paris...

. He also studied the symbol

Symbol

A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...

ism of the alchemists

Alchemy

Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...

and read Jung's Alchemy and Psychology. His favourite examples at the time were the mannerists

Mannerism

Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...

, especially Jacques Callot

Jacques Callot

Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine . He is an important figure in the development of the old master print...

, and he was also very much influenced by Jan Van Eyck

Jan van Eyck

Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....

and Jean Fouquet

Jean Fouquet

Jean Fouquet was a preeminent French painter of the 15th century, a master of both panel painting and manuscript illumination, and the apparent inventor of the portrait miniature. He was the first French artist to travel to Italy and experience at first hand the Italian Early...

. In 1958 he founded the Galerie Fuchs-Fischoff in Vienna to promote and support the younger painters of the Fantastic Realism

Fantastic Realism

Fantastic Realism can refer to:*Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, a 20th century group of artists in Vienna combining techniques of the Old Masters with religious and esoteric symbolism...

school. Together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Friedensreich Hundertwasser

and Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer , is an Austrian painter and is internationally renowned for his abstract informal art.In his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism...

, he founded the Pintorarium.

In 1956 he converted to Roman Catholicism (his mother had had him baptized during the war in order to save him from being sent to a concentration camp). In 1957 he entered the Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion where he began work on his monumental Last Supper and devoted himself to producing small sized paintings on religious themes such as Moses and the Burning Bush, culminating in a commission to paint three altar paintings on parchment, the cycle of the Mysteries of the Holy Rosary (1958–61), for the Rosenkranzkirche in Hetzendorf, Vienna. He also deals with contemporary issues in his masterpiece of this period, Psalm 69 (1949–60). (Fuchs, 1978, p. 53).
He returned to Vienna in 1961 and had a vision of what he called the verschollener Stil (Hidden Prime of Styles), the theory of which he set forth in his inspired and grandiose book Architectura Caelestis: Die Bilder des verschollenen Stils (Salzburg, 1966). He also produced several important cycles of prints, such as Unicorn
Unicorn
The unicorn is a legendary animal from European folklore that resembles a white horse with a large, pointed, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, and sometimes a goat's beard...

(1950–52), Samson
Samson
Samson, Shimshon ; Shamshoun or Sampson is the third to last of the Judges of the ancient Israelites mentioned in the Tanakh ....

(1960–64), Esther (1964-7) and Sphinx
Sphinx
A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...

(1966-7; all illustrated in Weis). In 1972 he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner

Otto Wagner

Otto Koloman Wagner was an Austrian architect and urban planner, known for his lasting impact on the appearance of his home town Vienna, to which he contributed many landmarks.-Life:...

Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed. The villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988. From 1970 on, he embarked on numerous sculptural projects such as Queen Esther (h. 2.63 m, 1972), located at the entrance to the museum, and also mounted on the radiator cap of the Cadillac at the entrance to the Dalí Museum in Figueres

Figueres

Figueres is the capital of the comarca of Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Teatre-Museu Gala Salvador Dalí, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which attracts many visitors...

, Catalonia

Catalonia

Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

, Spain.

From 1974 he became involved in designing stage sets and costumes for the operas of Mozart and Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

including Die Zauberflöte, Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...

, and Lohengrin
Lohengrin (opera)
Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...

. He took a stab at industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva

Timo Sarpaneva

Timo Sarpaneva was an influential Finnish designer, sculptor, and educator best known in the art world for innovative work in glass, which often merged attributes of display art objects with utilitarian designations. While glass remained his most commonly addressed medium, he worked with metal,...

that Fuchs decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...

maker's Studio Linie.

In 1993 Fuchs was given a retrospective exhibition at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg

Russian Museum

The State Russian Museum is the largest depository of Russian fine art in St Petersburg....

, one of the first Western artists so honored.

Publications

Architectura caelestis: die Bilder des verschollenen Stils (Salzburg: Residenz, 1966/Pb ed., Dtv, 1973)
Album der Familie Fuchs (Salzburg: Residenz, 1973)
Im Zeichen der Sphinx: Schriften und Bilder, ed. Walter Schurian (Munich, Dtv, 1978)
Aura: Ein Marchen der Sehnsucht (Munich: Dtv, 1981)
Der Prophet des Schonen: Arno Breker (Marco, 1982)
Von Jahwe: Gedichte (Munich, 1982)

Other publications

1977 - Fuchs über Ernst Fuchs: Bilder und Zeichnungen von 1945-1976, (R.P. Hartmann Paris) ISBN 978-3-492-02283-5 (German Language)
2003 - Ernst Fuchs - Zeichnungen und Graphik aus der frühen Schaffensperiode - 1942 bis 1959. (Friedrich Haider) (Wien: Löcker-Verlag) ISBN 3-85409-387-X (German Language)
2005 - Fantastic Art (Taschen)(Schurian, Prof. Dr. Walter) ISBN 978-3-8228-2954-7 (English edition)
2006 - True Visions (Erik Davis
Erik Davis
Erik Davis is a North American writer, social historian, cultural critic and lecturer.He is noted for his study of the history of technology and society and his essays about the fate of the individual in the dawning posthuman era...

and Pablo Echaurren) (Betty Books) ISBN 88-902372-0-1
2007 - Metamorphosis (beinArt) ISBN 978-0-9803231-0-8
2008 - Phantastischer Realismus (Belvedere, Wien) ISBN 978-3-901508-44-8 (German Language)

Life and work

Publications

Other publications

See also

External links

Further reading