Exposition Art Blog: Fantastic realism Ernst Fuchs

Fantastic realism Ernst Fuchs

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.





 Ernst Fuchs was not only commonly known through his outstanding and versatile talent as an artist, his life was totally unconventional and coined by constant ups and downs. He spent his childhood and adolescent years as underdog chased by the NS-regime in poverty, acquired enormous wealth in the 1970s, lost everything but regained everything soon later. For some time he lived and painted in a monastery, and fathered before and after this time sixteen children with seven wives. His family car was in the 1960s a tiny Puch-Fiat and in the 70s he owned a golden Rolls Royce Phantom, which he fitted with his own intarsia and painted ceiling. Muses, models and lovers always surrounded him.





 Extremes determined his life and work. God, Eros, knight, death and the Devil! The genius always moves between extremes and even as a83-year-old man does not come to rest. He always was unloved and not understood by a lot of people, but he has got a big family and a worldwide fan community. Three generations of artists all around the world are already his students and artistic successors.(ernstfuchs-zentrum.com)




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