Ernst Fuchs Painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer and scene designer

Ernst Fuchs was born in 1930 in Vienna. He was a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, set designer, composer, author, philosopher and visionary – a whopping assortment of art with diverse, overflowing talents. Since his father was a Jew and had to flee to Shanghai after the “Anschluss” of Austria, the then eight-year-old Ernst Fuchs was met with hostility and baptized in 1942 to be Roman Catholic. He himself chose his baptismal name: Ernst Peter Paul, after Rubens, his favorite painter. From 1942, as a twelve-year-old, Ernst Fuchs was taught drawing and painting by Alois Schiemann. From 1946 to 1950 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna; his teacher was Albert Paris Gütersloh. Together with his fellow students Wolfgang Hutter, Arik Brauer, Anton Lehmden and the older Rudolf Hausner, he founded the “Vienna School of Fantastic Realism”.