Ernst Fuchs biography

- ERNST FUCHS PAINTER

Ernest Fox was a Austrian artist among the founders of Viennese School of Fantastic Realism. 

He was born in 1930 in Vienna into 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 which he will found Fantastic Realism.

After completing his studies, an intense period of travel and collaboration begins. In 1947 he went to Italy where he met Giorgio de Chirico It is Happy Casorati. In 1949 it was the turn of Paris, where he came into contact with surrealism and got to know Jean Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau and especially Salvador Dali. He also travels to the United States where he meets in 1953 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 Last dinner. It was in this period that he began to devote 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 bought the villa he owned Otto Wagner to make it his study. He restructured 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 died in Vienna in 2015.