Rudolf Hausner
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Rudolf Hausner | |
---|---|
Born | 4 December 1914 |
Died | 25 February 1995 |
Nationality | Austrian |
Education | Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna |
Movement | Surrealism, Vienna School of Fantastic Realism |
Rudolf Hausner (4 December 1914, Vienna – 25 February 1995, Mödling) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. Hausner has been described as a "psychic realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter" (Gunter Engelhardt).
Early life
Of
In 1937, Hausner was drafted into the Austrian Armed Forces. In 1938, after the Anschluss, his painting was banned from being exhibited by the Reich Chamber of Culture, considered degenerate art. In 1941 he was drafted into the German Armed Forces. During this time there was his formative traumatic log cabin experience in the Russian Tatra Mountains, which he would reflect in his later works. In 1943, Hausner was dismissed by the Wehrmacht, declared unfit for war, and was employed as a technical draftsman in the armaments industry. In 1944, Hausner married Irene Schmied. During the last days of the World War II he was assigned to an air defense unit.[2]
Following World War II
After the war, he returned to his bomb-damaged studio in
He married his second wife, Hermine Jedliczka, 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.
Conflict with the Surrealists and later life
In 1957, Hausner painted his first "Adam" picture. He came into conflict with the Surrealist orthodoxy, who condemned his attempt to give equal importance to both conscious and unconscious processes in the artistic creation.
In 1959, he was a participant in the II. documenta in Kassel. In the same year, Rudolf Hausner exhibited for the first time in a group exhibition at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. Numerous international exhibitions followed. In addition, Rudolf Hausner gave lectures and accepted guest lecturer positions in Hamburg and Tokyo. In 1959 he co-founded the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism together with his old surrealist group members: Ernst Fuchs, Helmut Leherb, Fritz Janschka, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden and Arik Brauer. 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 Jedliczka 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
A characteristic of his painting technique is the use of translucent ("glazing") resin oil paints in more than ten layers on top of each other over underpainting of acrylic paints, which gives the paint a special luminous depth. He also developed methods to create flawless transitions in pure oil painting without the use of an airbrush.
Bibliography
- R. Hausner, Adam und Anima (exh. cat., Bad Frankenhausen, Panorama Mus., 1994)
References
Sources
- Die Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus (exh. cat., Hannover, Kestner-Ges., 1965)
- W. Schmied: Rudolf Hausner (Salzburg, 1970)
- V. Huber, ed.: Rudolf Hausner: Werkzeichnis der Druckgraphik von 1966 bis 1975 (Offenbach am Main, 1977)
- H. Hollander: Rudolf Hausner Werkmonographie (Offenbach am Main, 1985)