Ernst Fuchs biography

Ernst Fuchs was an Austrian artist among the founders of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism. He was born in 1930 in Vienna to a Jewish family. Forced to study at home by the racial laws, at the end of the Second World War he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts where he met the artists Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmdenma with whom he would found Fantastic Realism . After completing his studies, he began an intense period of travel and collaborations. In 1947 he went to Italy where he met Giorgio de Chirico and Felice Casorati. In 1949 it was his turn to Paris, where he came into contact with surrealism and met Jean Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and above all Salvadore Dalì. He also traveled to the United States where in 1953 he met Peggy Guggenheim . Finally in 1956 he went to Israel where he converted to Catholicism and where he stayed for more than a year. During his stay he lives in the Basilica of the Dormition of Mary where he begins to paint his largest canvas The Last Supper . It is in this period that he began to dedicate himself to religious themes and agreed to paint the triptych The mysteries of the Holy Rosary for the Rosenkranzkirche church in Hetzendorf in Vienna.
In 1961 he returned to Vienna and in 1972 he purchased the villa that belonged to Otto Wagner to make it his studio. He renovated it to use it as a museum and, at the same time, as his residence, opening it to the public in 1988.
Not just a painter, Ernst Fuchs began working as a theater set designer, architect, designer, writer and musician. Unfortunately, his prolific artistic production suffered a setback in 2009 due to some physical problems that prevented him from using his right arm. Ernst Fuchs passed away in Vienna in 2015.