Rudolf Hausner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rudolf Hausner (1914 – 1995) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman,
printmaker and sculptor. Hausner has been described as a "psychic
realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter" (Gunter Engelhardt).
Hausner studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1931 until 1936.
During this period he also traveled around Europe, visiting England, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey,
and Egypt.
After he was designated a 'degenerate' artist in 1938,
exhibition of his work was banned in Germany.
He was a soldier from 1941 until 1945. In 1942 he
married Grete Czingely. Before allying himself with and co-founding the
Vienna School of Fantastic Realism his works were mainly
Expressionist-influenced images of suburbs, still-lifes, and female
models, most of which he destroyed.
In 1944,
Hausner married Irene Schmied. During the last days of the
second world war he was assigned to an air defense unit. After the
war, he returned to his bomb-damaged studio and resumed work as an
artist. In 1946
he founded a
surrealist group together with
Edgar Jené,
Ernst Fuchs,
Wolfgang Hutter and
Fritz Janschka. They were later joined by
Arik Brauer and
Anton Lehmden. He joined the
Art-Club and had his first one-man exhibition in the
Konzerthaus, Vienna. A key work of this period, It's me! (1948;
Vienna, Hist. Mus.), shows his awareness of
Pittura Metafisica and Surrealism in a psychoanalytical painting
where the elongated being in the foreground penetrates what was
apparently a real landscape, until it tears like a backdrop; another
painting, Forum of Inward-turned Optics (1948; Vienna, Hist. Mus.), is
evidence of his ability to depict the subject in a realist style while
simultaneously overturning the laws of one-point perspective. He married
Hermine Jedlicka in 1951; their
daughter
Xenia Hausner, also an artist, was born the same year. After working
on the painting for six years, he completed his masterpiece, The Ark
of Odysseus, in 1956.
The Ark of Odysseus (1948-51 and 1953-6; Vienna, Hist. Mus.),
depicts the hero as a self-portrait and was a precursor to the series of
Adam paintings in which Hausner painted his own features.
In 1957,
Hausner painted his first "Adam" picture. He came into conflict with the
Surrealist orthodoxy, who condemned as heretical his attempt to give
equal importance to both conscious and unconscious processes. In 1959 he
co-founded the
Vienna School of Fantastic Realism together with his old surrealism
group members: Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer,
and Fritz Janschka. In 1962,
Hausner met
Paul Delvaux,
René Magritte,
Victor Brauner, and
Dorothea Tanning while traveling in Germany, the
Netherlands, Belgium,
and France. The 1st Burda Prize for Painting was awarded to him in 1967. In 1969, he
was awarded the Prize of the City of Vienna. Shortly after, he separated
from Hermine Jedlicka and moved to Hietzing together with his daughter
Xenia and Anne Wolgast, whom he had met in Hamburg.
From 1966 until 1980, he
was a guest professor at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg.
He also taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Among his students
were
Joseph Bramer,
Friedrich Hechelmann,
Gottfried Helnwein,
Michael Engelhardt, and
Siegried Goldberger. Hausner was awarded the Austrian State Prize
for Painting in
1970.
1
