Ernst Fuchs (artist)

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, Rudolf Hausner, Helmut Leherb, Fritz Janschka, 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 founding member of the Art-Club (1946), as well as the Hundsgruppe, set up in opposition to it in 1951, together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer. Fuchs' work of this period was influenced by the art of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and then by Max Pechstein, Heinrich Campendonk, Edvard Munch, Henry Moore and Pablo Picasso. During this time, seeking to achieve the vivid lighting effects achieved by such Old Masters as Albrecht Altdorfer, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Martin Schongauer, 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 mixed with resin, 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. He also studied the symbolism of the alchemists and read Jung's Psychology and Alchemy. His favourite examples at the time were the mannerists, especially Jacques Callot, and he was 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 Realism school. Together with Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Arnulf Rainer, he founded the Pintorarium. When he was 12 years old, he converted to Roman Catholicism (his mother had him baptized during the war in order to save him from being sent to a concentration camp). ==Design projects==

From 1974, he became involved in designing stage sets and costumes for the operas of Mozart and Richard Wagner, including Die Zauberflöte, Parsifal, and Lohengrin. He experimented with industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Fuchs decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain 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. Fuchs died in Vienna's Sophienspital at the age of 85 on 9 November 2015. ==Decorations and awards==

• 1972: City of Vienna Prize for Visual Arts • 2000: Officier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres • 2009: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class • 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) ==See also==