Ernst Fuchs - Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

Ernst Fuchs (February 13, 1930 – November 9, 2015) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet, singer and one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. In 1972, he acquired the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hütteldorf, which he restored and transformed. The villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988.(Wikipedia)
"The universal artist from Vienna, Austria became world famous as graphic artist, painter, sculptor, designer, stage designer, architect, composer and poet. He created a gigantic number of etchings and an equal comprehensive amount of oil paintings and aquarells. In the chapel of parish church St.Egid in Klagenfurt he created monumental frescos to the Apocalypse of John. Beside numerous small-scale sculptures and reliefs Ernst Fuchs created a huge number of life-sized and larger than life-sized sculptures. He designed furniture, tiles, porcelain, jewellery, medallions, tapestry, carpets, fabrics and also costumes and stage decorations for Parsifal, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, the Magic Flute, Hoffmanns Narratives The Bat and The Golem. Various substantial building projects like a hotel in St. Veit an der Glan or a church at "Thal bei Graz", Austria and a number of glass mosaic fountains were built after his designs. He composed operas and produced a number of records and CD´s. Ernst Fuchs wrote poems, children’s books und fairy-tales, illustrated numerous books, for example, the Bible, and wrote theoretical works about art- and architecture, as well as an autobiography.
He was in contact with important artists of his time like Dali, Hundertwasser and Leonard Bernstein. His undisputed best known work is his own museum; a Villa in Vienna built by Austrian architect Otto Wagner, which he transformed into a fantastic Fuchs museum. Here the visitor will find a representative cross-section of Ernst Fuchs’s work. In the area surrounding the house he created a marvellous sculpture park, where an exceptional well house with basin of a fountain built by the artist out of glass mosaic is situated."(ernstfuchs-zentrum.com)

Pop Art - Kiki Kogelnik

Kiki Kogelnik (1935–1997) was an Austrian painter, sculptor and printmaker. Born in southern Austria, she studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and moved to New York City in 1961. Kogelnik is considered Austria’s most important pop-related artist, despite having been known to take issue with being considered part of the pop art movement.Kogelnik began her career at the Galerie Nächst St. Stephan in Vienna in 1961, showing abstract works. At the time she was influenced by Serge Poliakoff of the École de Paris, but later found her own unique genre while surrounded by the pop art movement in New York. At one point she was engaged to Austrian abstract expressionist artist Arnulf Rainer.Kogelnik was close to another abstract expressionist, the American artist Sam Francis, and spent time with him in 1961 in New York and Santa Monica, California. Kogelnik then moved to New York in 1962 where she joined a close-knit group of artists that included Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Tom Wesselmann, Joan Mitchell, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, among others. Pop was a way of life, and with Kogelnik extravagant hats and outfits Kogelnik became a captivating happening wherever she went.Her work during that time was strongly influenced by the pop art colors and materials of the time, producing numerous brightly colored euphoric space-themed paintings.

Unlike pop artists, she avoided the celebration of commerce or quotidian objects, although she was known to foreground plastics and the artificial over nature.During the early 1960s Kogelnik began to use life-size cutout paper stencils of her friends to produce her paintings. In 1965 these prototype cut-outs became vinyl hangings, presented on the same clothing racks that she saw pushed down the streets in the vicinity of her studio in New York’s garment district.In the 1970s Kogelnik’s focus shifted to what later became known as her Women works, specifically addressing the female role portrayed in commercial advertising. Broaching feminist issues indirectly with irony, humor and a cool pop aesthetic was unique to Kogelnik’s work during this time. In 1974 she also began to work occasionally with ceramics, employing sculptural form as an extension of painting.
In the 1980s, fragmented people, signs and symbols begin to fill Kogelnik’s work and in her Expansions series she used ceramic modules shown in conjunction with her paintings. She also produced and directed a short 16mm B&W film CBGB in 1978, featuring Jim Carroll and others.In later works, the human body is depicted in increasingly fragmented and manipulated form, until in the 1990s much of her work portrayed highly abstracted yet expressive faces. During this time Kogelnik created a series of glass sculptures, related drawings and prints, in which she sought to comment on decorative and commercial themes in art-making.Wikipedia

Pop Art Kiki Kogelnik

Kiki Kogelnik (1935–1997) was an Austrian painter, sculptor and printmaker. Born in southern Austria, she studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and moved to New York in 1961. Kogelnik is considered Austria’s most important pop-related artist, despite having been known to take issue with being considered part of the pop art movement.Kogelnik began her career at the Galerie Nächst St. Stephan in Vienna in 1961, showing abstract works. At the time she was influenced by Serge Poliakoff of the École de Paris, but later found her own unique genre while surrounded by the pop art movement in New York. At one point she was engaged to Austrian abstract expressionist artist Arnulf Rainer.Kogelnik was close to another abstract expressionist, the American artist Sam Francis, and spent time with him in 1961 in New York and Santa Monica, California. Kogelnik then moved to New York in 1962 where she joined a close-knit group of artists that included Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Tom Wesselmann, Joan Mitchell, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, among others. Pop was a way of life, and with Kogelnik extravagant hats and outfits Kogelnik became a captivating happening wherever she went.

In the 1970s Kogelnik’s focus shifted to what later became known as her Women works, specifically addressing the female role portrayed in commercial advertising. Broaching feminist issues indirectly with irony, humor and a cool pop aesthetic was unique to Kogelnik’s work during this time. In 1974 she also began to work occasionally with ceramics, employing sculptural form as an extension of painting.

In the 1980s, fragmented people, signs and symbols begin to fill Kogelnik’s work and in her Expansions series she used ceramic modules shown in conjunction with her paintings. She also produced and directed a short 16mm B&W film CBGB in 1978, featuring Jim Carroll and others.
In later works, the human body is depicted in increasingly fragmented and manipulated form, until in the 1990s much of her work portrayed highly abstracted yet expressive faces. During this time Kogelnik created a series of glass sculptures, related drawings and prints, in which she sought to comment on decorative and commercial themes in art-making.Wikipedia

Sam Fullbrook

Sam Fullbrook (1922–2004) was an Australian artist who was a winner of the Archibald Prize for portraiture and the Wynne Prize for landscape. He was described as "last of the bushman painters" (a rural art tradition). However Fullbrook was fine art-trained and his sophisticated works are in every State art museum in Australia and international collections.Fullbrook was to have a constant and wide ranging career as a painter beginning in 1948 with his first joint exhibition at Tye’s Gallery with NGS classmate Tim Nicholl. In the same year his father died and he returned to Sydney, converting his father’s shop into an art studio. To support his painting, Fullbrook went to far North Queensland for the cane-cutting season.
Around this time, sharks and "Bondi virgins" made their first appearance in his works. He returned to Queensland where he befriended James Wieneke of Moreton Gallery and was employed by Richard Morley, founder of the Blake Prize. This is when he discovered a talent for landscapes.

His first solo exhibition was held at the Waterside Workers’ Hall, Sydney in 1952. The same year, he had a second solo show at the Moreton Gallery, Brisbane and received honourable mention in the Archibald Prize for his portrait of his contemporary, potter Bernard Sahm. Fullbrook then travelled west across Australia, setting up a studio in Marble Bar in Western Australia, also working as a miner, cane cutter and stockman.
In 1971, he lost most of his work in a fire at his Brisbane studio, but recovered to continue working in the Darling Downs, Sydney, the Gold Coast and Melbourne.

He set up studios all over the country and each change in events and environment would prompt a new direction in the works. His main series were the "Darling River series", the "Phoenix" series in Buderim, Queensland, "Circus", "Brisbane River", and "The Shearer" series among others. His oeuvre ranged from biblical themes, horse-racing, aboriginal Australians, Pilbara landscapes to Bondi, wildlife, floral works, and studio nudes.Artist Robert Jacks said he painted "some of the most beautiful portraits ever painted in Australia."Among them are former Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr and media entrepreneur Reg Grundy; others include Pat Brown and Bernard Sahm, artists, jockeys and members of the public. The Kerr portrait was submitted to hang in Parliament House but was rejected for being "caricature".

Fullbrook's light and airy works were soft figuration bordering on abstraction in high-tone coloured patches but leaving the subject entirely recognisable. Most of his paintings and scenes were about his personal interests and life experiences. He painted in oils and worked in pastels and watercolour as well as exhibiting drawings. Reviewing a 1995 National Gallery of Victoria exhibition, Racing Colors, art critic Robert Nelson described him as:
  "A colourist... Fullbrook's forte lies in the difficult balancing of patches of pinks and teal, or striations of lilac and dashes of cadmium green.Wikipedia

Secession Josef Maria Auchentaller

Josef Maria Auchentaller (2 August 1865–31 December 1949) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, and printmaker associated with the Vienna Secession and the Art Nouveau styleJosef Auchentaller attended the Technical College in Vienna from 1882–1886. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna starting in 1890, and there he excelled and won several awards. In 1885, he fell in love with Emma Scheid, the daughter of a prosperous manufacturer of silverware and jewelry. The couple married in 1891 after her father was convinced of Auchentaller's social and financial suitability. They had a daughter, Maria Josepha, and a son, Pete

 Auchentaller was a substantial contributor to the Vienna Secession and the Art Nouveau style. However, many of Auchentaller's works remain in private collections or were lost. In 1920s, a sizeable collection of his oil paintings bound for a retrospective in Argentina disappeared. A large frieze he painted entitled "Joy, Fair Spark of the Gods", created for the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna, is lost as well.

 In 2008–2009, a traveling exhibition entitled "Josef Maria Auchentaller (1865-1949): A Secessionist on the Borders of the Empire" was curated by Roberto Festi. Over 300 of his works were displayed at the Palazzo Attems-Petzenstein, in the Musei provinciali of Gorizia, Italy; the Galleria Civica in Bolzano, Italy; and the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria.In 2013 two portraits of his daughter Maria, including Bunte Bände, were shown at the National Gallery, London exhibition Facing the.Wikipedia

 

Surrealism Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner (Vienna, December 4, 1914 – February 25, 1995) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor.
Rudolf Hausner: A major Austrian painter and printmaker, Rudolf Hausner studied art at the Academy in Vienna from 1931 to 1936, under Fahringer and Sterrer. Many of his early paintings were confiscated and branded as 'degenerate' by the ruling nazi party in 1938. In 1941 Hausner was drafted by the German army and remained a soldier until the war's end in 1945. After the war he returned to Vienna and immersed himself in studies dealing with the unconscious and with the art of Surrealists, particularly that of Max Ernst. Along with Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, Rudolf Hausner founded the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism in 1947. During the 1950's and 1960's this became one of Austria's most important movements and Hausner was its most influential artist. During this time he also held principal teaching posts at the academies of Vienna and Hamburg.

 Equally gifted as a painter, lithographer and etcher, Hausner's complex art is based upon potent symbols and imagery. Primary among these is the constantly recurring image of the first man, Adam, who is part auto-biographical and part archetype. Another compelling image is that of the man or boy in a sailor's cap. Hausner claimed that this image symbolized the myth of Odysseus and his epic voyages on the seas. It also, however, is representative of the artist's own boyhood and the integrated relationships of youth and age within the self. As with all of Hausner's monumental works of art, the elements within Adam Bei Sich demand a lifetime of contemplation and study.(rogallery.com)