Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs (b. February 13, 1930)

Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet and singer. Son of Maximillian and Leopoldine Fuchs. Studied sculpture with Emmy Steinbock in 1943. In 1944 he attended the St. Anna Painting School where he studied under Prof. Fröhlich. He entered the Acad. of Fine Arts in Vienna in 1945 where he began his studies under Prof. Robin C. Anderson, later moving to the class of Albert Paris von Gütersloh. There he met Arik Bauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, together with whom he later founded what has become known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He was also a founder-member of the Art-Club (1946), as well as the the Hundsgruppe, the group that set up in opposition to it in 1951, together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer. His work of this period was influenced by the art of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and then by Max Pechstein, Heinrich Campendonck, Edvard Munch, Henry Moore and Picasso. Adopting the old masters misch(e) technik (mixed technique) of resin oil and egg tempera painting he sought to achieve and revive the precise techniques of old masters such as Albrecht Altdorfer, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Martin Schongauer, who served as his examples.

In his autobiographical sketch (Ernst Fuchs: Biographia Mythomanica in Helmut Weiss Ernst Fuchs: Das graphische Werk, Vienna 1967, p. 7ff) Fuchs describes his father’s scrap yard situated on the south side of Vienna where, as a child before the war, he found beautiful old books and prints which instilled in him a love of decoration, heraldic symbols like the Austrian double-eagle, for fine paper, engravings and woodcuts. Here he found scrap brass plates on which he produced his first etchings. These discoveries fired his imagination and had a lasting influence on him during these formative years, which can be traced throughout his oeuvre. Encouraged by his parents Fuchs’ imagination was allowed free reign. He drew from and early age and was considered a child prodigy.

Between 1950 and 1961 Fuchs lived mostly in Paris and made a number of journeys to the USA and Israel. His favourite reading material at the time is the sermons of Meister Eckehart. He also studies the symbolism of the alchemists and reads Jung’s Psychology of Alchemy. His favourite examples at the time are the mannerists, especially Jacques Callot, and is also very much influenced by Jan Van Eyck and Jean Fouquet. In 1958 he founded the Galerie Fuchs-Fischoff in Vienna to promote and support the younger painters of the Fantastic Realist school. Together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer he founded the Pintorarium.

In 1956 he converted to 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 Dormittio Monastery 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 (see Fuchs, 1978, p. 53).

He returned to Vienna in 1961 and had a vision of what he called the ’verschollener Stil’ (The Hidden Prime of Styles), the theory of which he set out 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 (1950-52), Samson (1960-64), Esther (1964-7) and Sphinx (1966-7; all illustrated in Weis). In 1972 he acquires the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hetzendorf, which he restores and transforms. The villa is inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum in 1988. From 1970 he embarked on numerous sculptural works such as Queen Esther (h. 2.63 m, 1972), located at the entrance to the museum (see below) and mounted on the Cadillac at the entrance to the Dalí Museum in... 

From 1974 he became involved in designing stage sets and costumes for the operas of Mozart and Richard Wagner including The Magic Flute, Parsifal and Lohengrin...

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

WRITINGS 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)

BIBLIOGRAPHY 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 Weinstarasse, 1995)