Arik Brauer
1929–2021 · Austrian painter, co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism
Arik Brauer (Vienna, 1929 - Vienna, 2021) was an Austrian painter of Lithuanian Jewish descent, best known as a co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. He also worked as a printmaker, singer-songwriter, dancer, stage designer and architect, but his most lasting contribution lies in painting, where he combined meticulous craftsmanship with surrealism at a time when abstraction dominated the art world.
Born to emigrant parents, he grew up in Vienna under the Nazi regime. His father was murdered in a concentration camp, while Brauer survived the war hidden in a garden colony. After the war he entered the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 1945, where he was taught by Albert Paris Gütersloh and Herbert Boeckl, and from 1947 to 1951 he studied singing. He first moved to Paris in 1949. He married Naomi Dahabani in Israel in 1957, and the couple later divided their time between Paris, Vienna and Ein Hod.
His early works include Vogelfang (1962), filled with flying mythical creatures, Turm aus gebrannter Erde (1962/63), notable for its detailed execution, and Der Regenmacher vom Karmel (The Rainmaker from Carmel, 1964), a colourful paradise landscape. His paintings mix fabulous creatures, richly detailed settings and a visionary sensibility. Later he worked on long cycles such as Die Verfolgung des jüdischen Volks, begun in 1973, and a illustrated Passover Haggadah shown in Vienna in 2014.
Beyond painting, he wrote and performed songs in Viennese dialect during the 1970s, which are regarded as early contributions to Austropop. In 1975 he designed the sets and costumes for Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Paris Opera. He taught at the Vienna Academy from 1985 to 1997 and in the 1990s designed buildings in Austria and Israel covered in mosaics and painted tiles, among them the Arik-Brauer-Haus in Vienna (1993) and the facade of the Kastra shopping mall in Haifa.
His legacy rests on major retrospectives at institutions such as the Albertina (1974), the Belvedere (1976), the Jewish Museum in New York (1978) and the Leopold Museum (2015), as well as on the international reach of the Vienna School. He died in Vienna in January 2021, at the age of 92.