Ernst Fuchs died – Farewell to a survivor – Süddeutsche.de

Monstrous variegation as an escape from the Modern: The Viennese painter and stage designer Ernst Fuchs brought the post-war period to be amazed. Now he has died.

If it had not been for him very real, would have have to invent him: Ernst Fuchs, the man who as an artist and designer living pretty much risked everything. He had, which was born in 1930 in Vienna as the son of a Jewish Altwarenhändlers and a Catholic seamstress really just painting studies -. And the right side

During his studies, which he described as the age of fifteen at Albert Paris Gütersloh began, he has dealt almost exclusively with the artistic and graphic techniques of the Old Masters, with the Old Catholic and ancient Jewish mythologies and always with astrological and esoteric theories.

The painter Fuchs was searching for a “missing man style “

So he was not interested in what the famous contemporaries created. The results of this escape from the constraints of modernity have in the postwar period many people who expected a message of art, impressed.

Yes, the need for a painting that has something to talk about and celebrated mysteries seems time to be in Vienna have been so great that the same five artists – besides Fuchs still Arik Brauer, Anton Lehmden, Rudolf Hausner and Wolfgang Hutter – high prices for their sophisticated enigmatic and apparently painted with fervor compositions require yes with these fees almost princely painter existences could build.

As early as 1948, the five like-minded masters have public appeal and enterprising teamed for “Vienna School of Fantastic Realism”. And even in Paris, where Fuchs then twelve years lived with surrealists had contact, were found at that time enthusiastic admirers who, marveled at the man who “Disappeared style” was searching for a as a late representative of symbolism.

This artist is not interested in the possibilities of painting

If you look at the picturesque work of Fuchs today, you can a slight aversion to the monstrously loud colorfulness of the compositions, the mannerist distortion of the above clearly exposed body that schablonenhaft airbrushed faces and against the turgid consecration, from which all figures are surrounded, not help. Even irritated the harsh juxtaposition of about precisely dissected details and fleeting, even sloppy gepinselten large areas

You can tell. This artist is not really interested in the possibilities of painting, but only to the ways the audience with fictional to amaze worlds and bring high feelings to marvel or to force them to disgust.

Its design ambition culminated in the architecture

So the art of Fuchs tended always about painting and Graphics addition towards sculpture and architecture. Only in the room she was aware of its effect. Theater people seem to have sensed that. And so Fox was invited again and again to make sets for supposedly matching operas. Munich will remember the scandal that the gigantic sum of money has been triggered, the fox asked for his “Lohengrin” -Bühnenbild the Munich National Theater and received.

As with his Viennese contemporaries Friedensreich Hundertwasser also resulted in Fuchs designing ambition finally into the architecture. The fact that he has bought the splendid private mansion of the great Viennese architect Otto Wagner, exemplary restored and opened as Fuchs Museum to the public, is to be praised. The bombastic “Nymphaeum Omega”, which he has built there in the garden, you will nevertheless still concede that it exaggerates the style of Wagner into the Decorative. But in one of Fuchs on ceilings and walls without gaps being painted chapel space one can only respond claustrophobic.

This Monday is Ernst Fuchs died peacefully surrounded by his large family in Vienna.