VIENNA.- On the occasion of the artist’s 85th birthday, the Leopold Museum is dedicating a comprehensive retrospective to the works of Arik Brauer (born 1929 in Vienna). Around 400 exhibits take visitors on a journey through Brauer’s oeuvre, from his time at the Vienna Academy to the present, featuring more than 120 paintings, over 30 drawings, 25 sculptures, ceramics, jewelry and Gobelin tapestries. The presentation is complemented by documents, photographs of stage sets and architectural designs, film and TV clips (Brauer starred alongside Jean-Paul Belmondo!), as well as books and records, affording a comprehensive overview of the versatility of this universal artist.

Arik Brauer, who celebrated his 85th birthday on the 4th of January 2014, is one of the main exponents of the »Vienna School of Fantastic Realism« inspired by Albert Paris Gütersloh. After the war, Brauer studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. In 1951 he participated together with Arnulf Rainer and Ernst Fuchs in the legendary exhibition of the so-called »Hundsgruppe«. Together with Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Albert Paris Gütersloh’s son Wolfgang Hutter as well as Rudolf Hausner, Brauer formed the »Vienna School of Fantastic Realism« from the 1960s, and the group of friends exhibited their works all over the world.

With his manner of painting in the style of the Old Masters and his bizarrely fantastic shapes, Brauer opposed the mainstream of the strictly dogmatic art movements of post-war Modernism. Instead, he cultivated an art that once again allowed room for imagination, storytelling and the joy of invention. All his life, Arik Brauer has enjoyed great popularity through his art, enhanced by his multiple talents as a singer, songwriter, poet and dancer.

The exhibition design was carried out by Professor Gustav Peichl, one of Austria’s most eminent architects, who also expertly designed the Leopold Museum’s Ernst Barlach presentation in 2009.

The exhibition is divided into several themes. Along with a retrospective part on the artist’s earlier works from the 1940s to the 1970s, there are separate emphases on the themes of war and suppression, on the environment and on depictions from mythology. These also include newer as well as the most recent works by the artist, including a self-portrait created especially for the exhibition.

The presentation also gives a voice to Brauer as a family man, as a defender of Israel, which has become his second home and an important source of inspiration to the artist, as an agnostic, as an actor, singer and narrator. Another spotlight is on Brauer’s great achievements as a stage designer, whose sets and costume designs, for instance in 1970 for the Zurich opera house, in 1972 for the Vienna State Opera and in 1977 for a production of Mozart’s »The Magic Flute« at the Opéra National de Paris, were received with much enthusiasm. Brauer has also created important architectural works, including the Brauer Haus in the Gumpendorfer Straße in Vienna, the facade designed by Brauer of the parish church Am Tabor in Vienna’s 2nd district, a fountain in the courtyard of a brewery in the Upper Austrian town Freistadt, the highway rest stop Lindach in Upper Austria, his artist’s house in the Israeli artists’ village Ein Hod as well as the huge facade of the shopping mall »Castra Center« in Haifa.