Ernst Fuchs (13 February 19309 November 2015) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1972, he acquired the derelict

Otto Wagner Otto Koloman Wagner (; 13 July 1841 – 11 April 1918) was an Austrian architect, furniture designer and urban planner. He was a leading member of the Vienna Secession movement of architecture, founded in 1897, and the broader Art Nouveau mo ...

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

Education

Born in Vienna as the only child of Maximilian and Leopoldine Fuchs, Fuchs attended the St. Anna Painting School, where he studied under Fritz Fröhlich (1944). He entered the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (1945), where he began his studies under Professor , later moving to the class of Albert Paris von Gütersloh.

Career

At the Academy, he met

Arik Brauer Arik Brauer (; 4 January 1929 – 24 January 2021) was an Austrian painter, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer-songwriter, stage designer, architect, and academic teacher. Brauer, from a family of Jewish emigrants, grew up in Vienna under the N ...

, Rudolf Hausner, Helmut Leherb, Fritz Janschka, Wolfgang Hutter, and

Anton Lehmden Anton Lehmden (2 January 1929 – 7 August 2018) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Lehmden was a co-founder, together with Ernst Fuchs, Maître Leherb (Helmut Leherb), Rudolf Hausner, Arik Brauer, Fritz Janschka and Wo ...

, together with whom he later founded what has become known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He was also a founding member of the Art-Club (1946), as well as the Hundsgruppe, set up in opposition to it in 1951, together with

Friedensreich Hundertwasser Friedrich Stowasser (15 December 1928 – 19 February 2000), better known by his pseudonym Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (), was an Austrian visual artist and architect who also worked in the field of environmental protection ...

and Arnulf Rainer. Fuchs' work of this period was influenced by the art of

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sket ...

and

Egon Schiele Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painters, painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude sel ...

and then by Max Pechstein, Heinrich Campendonk,

Edvard Munch Edvard Munch ( ; ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work ''The Scream'' has become one of Western art's most acclaimed images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inher ...

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract art, abstract monumental Bronze sculpture, bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Moore ...

and

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

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

Albrecht Altdorfer Albrecht Altdorfer ( – 12 February 1538) was a German painter, engraver and architect of the Renaissance working in Regensburg, Bavaria. Along with Lucas Cranach the Elder and Wolf Huber he is regarded to be the main representative of the Da ...

Albrecht Dürer Albrecht Dürer ( , ;; 21 May 1471 – 6 April 1528),Müller, Peter O. (1993) ''Substantiv-Derivation in Den Schriften Albrecht Dürers'', Walter de Gruyter. . sometimes spelled in English as Durer or Duerer, was a German painter, Old master prin ...

Matthias Grünewald Matthias Grünewald ( – 31 August 1528; also known as Mathis Gothart Nithart) was a German Renaissance painter of religious works who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th cent ...

and

Martin Schongauer Martin Schongauer (c. 1450–53, Colmar – 2 February 1491, Breisach), also known as Martin Schön ("Martin beautiful") or Hübsch Martin ("pretty Martin") by his contemporaries, was an Alsatian engraver and painter. He was the most important ...

, he revived and adopted the mischtechnik (mixed technique) of painting. In the mischtechnik,

egg tempera Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. ''Tempera'' also refers to the paintings done in ...

is used to build up volume, and is then glazed with

oil paints Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. Oil paint also has practical advantages over other paints, mainly because it is waterproof. The earliest surviving ex ...

mixed with

resin A resin is a solid or highly viscous liquid that can be converted into a polymer. Resins may be biological or synthetic in origin, but are typically harvested from plants. Resins are mixtures of organic compounds, predominantly terpenes. Commo ...

, producing a jewel-like effect. Between 1950 and 1961, Fuchs lived mostly in Paris, and made a number of journeys to the United States and Israel. His favourite reading material at the time was the sermons of

Meister Eckhart Eckhart von Hochheim ( – ), commonly known as Meister Eckhart (), Master Eckhart or Eckehart, claimed original name Johannes Eckhart,

. He also studied the

symbol A symbol is a mark, Sign (semiotics), sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, physical object, object, or wikt:relationship, relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by cr ...

ism of the

alchemists Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

and read

Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and psychologist who founded the school of analytical psychology. A prolific author of over 20 books, illustrator, and correspondent, Jung was a c ...

's '' Psychology and Alchemy''. His favourite examples at the time were the mannerists, especially

Jacques Callot Jacques Callot (; – 1635) was a baroque printmaker and drawing, draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine. He is an important person in the development of the old master print. He made more than 1,400 etchings that chronicled the life of his peri ...

, and he was also very much influenced by

Jan van Eyck Jan van Eyck ( ; ; – 9 July 1441) was a Flemish people, Flemish painter active in Bruges who was one of the early innovators of what became known as Early Netherlandish painting, and one of the most significant representatives of Early Nort ...

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

and Arnulf Rainer, he founded the Pintorarium. When he was 12 years old, he converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

(his mother had him baptized during the

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

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 dealt with contemporary issues in his masterpiece of this period, ''Psalm 69'' (1949–60). (Fuchs, 1978, p. 53). Fuchs 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 book '' Architectura Caelestis: Die Bilder des verschollenen Stils'' (Salzburg, 1966). He also produced several important cycles of prints, such as ''

Unicorn The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unico ...

'' (1950–52), ''

Samson SAMSON (Software for Adaptive Modeling and Simulation Of Nanosystems) is a computer software platform for molecular design being developed bOneAngstromand previously by the NANO-D group at the French Institute for Research in Computer Science an ...

'' (1960–64), ''Esther'' (1964–67) and ''

Sphinx A sphinx ( ; , ; or sphinges ) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. In Culture of Greece, Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, th ...

'' (1966–67; all illustrated in Weis). In 1972, he acquired the derelict

Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed. The villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988. From 1970 on, Fuchs 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 (; ) is the capital city of Alt Empordà county, in the Girona region, Catalonia, Spain. The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Dalí Theatre and Museum, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which att ...

Catalonia Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationalities and regions of Spain, nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of 2006, Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d'Aran) is situate ...

, Spain.

Design projects

From 1974, he became involved in designing stage sets and costumes for the operas of

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

and

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

, including ''

Die Zauberflöte ''The Magic Flute'' (, ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. It is a ''Singspiel'', a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue. The work premiered on ...

'', ''

Parsifal ''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is freely based on the 13th-century Middle High German chivalric romance ''Parzival'' of th ...

'', and ''

Lohengrin Lohengrin () is a character in German Arthurian literature. The son of Parzival (Percival), he is a knight of the Holy Grail sent in a boat pulled by swans to rescue a maiden who can never ask his identity. His story, which first appears in Wo ...

''. He experimented with industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscale ''Suomi'' tableware by

Timo Sarpaneva Timo Tapani Sarpaneva (31 October 1926 – 6 October 2006) 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 Work of art, art objects wi ...

that Fuchs decorated for the German Rosenthal

porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...

maker's ''Studio Linie''. In 1993, Fuchs was given a retrospective exhibition at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, one of the first Western artists so honored.

Personal life and death

Fuchs had 16 children. He was an Austrian

monarchist Monarchism is the advocacy of the system of monarchy or monarchical rule. A monarchist is an individual who supports this form of government independently of any specific monarch, whereas one who supports a particular monarch is a royalist. C ...

, His son Emanuel revealed after his death: "My father advocated the reintroduction of the monarchy because he thought it was the better form of government." Fuchs died in Vienna's Sophienspital at the age of 85 on 9 November 2015."Austrian painter Ernst Fuchs dies aged 85."
''

Belfast Telegraph The ''Belfast Telegraph'' is a daily newspaper published in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Independent News & Media, which also publishes the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and various other newspapers and magazines in Ireland. Its e ...

''. Retrieved 9 November 2015.

Decorations and awards

* 1972: City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts * 2000: Officier dans l’

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres The Order of Arts and Letters () is an order of France established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture. Its supplementary status to the was confirmed by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Its purpose is the recognition of significant ...

* 2009:

Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class The Austrian Decoration for Science and Art () is a state decoration of the Republic of Austria and forms part of the Austrian national honours system. History The "Austrian Decoration for Science and Art" was established by the National C ...

* 2010: Grand Decoration of Carinthia * 2010: Golden Medal of Honour for Services to the city of Vienna

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 Märchen der Sehnsucht'' (Munich: Dtv, 1981) , *''Der Prophet des Schönen: 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) * 2003 – ''Ernst Fuchs – Zeichnungen und Graphik aus der frühen Schaffensperiode – 1942 bis 1959.'' ( Friedrich Haider) (Vienna: Löcker-Verlag) * 2005 – ''Fantastic Art'' (Taschen) (Schurian, Prof. Dr. Walter) (English edition) * 2006 – ''True Visions'' ( Erik Davis and Pablo Echaurren) (Betty Books) * 2007 – ''Metamorphosis'' (beinArt) * 2008 – ''Phantastischer Realismus'' (Belvedere, Wien)

References

Sources

* Ernst Fuchs: ''Zeichnungen und Graphiken'', (Ketterer-Kunst, 1967) * H. Weis, ed.: ''Ernst Fuchs: Das graphische Werk'' (Vienna, 1967) * Ernst Fuchs: ''Homage à Böcklin'', (Frankf./Main/Geneva/Vienna, 1971) * ''Ernst Fuchs: oeuvre gravé'' (Friburg: Musee d'art et d'histoire, 1975) * ''Fuchs über Ernst Fuchs: Bilder und Zeichnungen von 1945–1976'', ed. R. P. Hartmann (Paris, 1977) * Ernst Fuchs: ''Arbeiten für der Hamburger Staatsoper'', (Hamburg 1977) * R. P. Hartmann, ed.: Ernst Fuchs: Das graphische Werk, 1967–1980 (Munich, 1980) * Ernst Fuchs: ''Bildalchemie'', (Osnabrück: Kulturgesichtliches Mus., c1981) * ''Gedichte von Jahwe'' (Munich: R. P. Hartmann, 1982) * U. Hotzy, ''Ernst Fuchs: die Werke aus den Jahren im Ausland'' (Salzburg, Univ., Diss., 1982) * ''Fuchs Graphik: Sydows Katalog einer idealen Sammlung'', ed., Heinrich v. Sydow-Zirkwitz (Berlin: Studio 69, 1983) * ''Planeta Caelestis'' (Berlin and Munich, 1987) * ''Der Feuerfuchs'', ed. R. P. Hartmann (Frankf./Main: Umschau Verlag, 1988) * ''Ernst Fuchs und Wein'', (Landau/Pfalz: Verein Südliche Weinstrasse, 1995) * ''Der Maler mit den 16 Kindern, (Die Welt, 4 November 2001)

External links

*
Ernst Fuchs Museum

Ernst Fuchs Werkvermittlung
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuchs, Ernst 1930 births 2015 deaths 20th-century Austrian painters 20th-century Austrian sculptors Austrian male sculptors Austrian male painters 21st-century Austrian painters 21st-century Austrian male artists Artists from Vienna Austrian contemporary artists Austrian Jews Austrian Roman Catholics Austrian monarchists Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism Fantastic art Fantastic realism Jewish Austrian painters Jewish Austrian sculptors Academy of Fine Arts Vienna alumni Recipients of the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class 20th-century Austrian male artists