The Viennese School of Phantastic Realism and the Surrealism
Franz Smola
Podcast
The Viennese School of Phantastic Realism and the Surrealism
Franz Smola
As a proven specialist, Franz Smola gives interesting insights into the artistic work of the Fantastic Realists in a lecture and also talks about their relations to Surrealism. Both seem to show a certain tendency towards the phantasmagorical and to tie deeper psychographics back to the surface of their landscape scenes and figures. Smola opens historical retrospectives into authoritative exhibitions of the Fantastic Realists, shedding light on the group’s emergence, aspirations, and highlights. He draws parallels to exciting international figures such as Wolfgang Paalen, Edgar Jené, and Salvador Dali, as well as to Magical Realism, which was active at the same time, especially in Prague. In view of the recurring actuality of surrealism – not least due to the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) – it is worthwhile to once again examine the phenomenon of Fantastic Realism more closely precisely with regard to its surrealist connections.
Artists
Participating artists
Dr. Franz Smola
has been curator of late 19th and early 20th century art at the Belvedere in Vienna since 2017. From 2009 to 2017, he worked as collection curator at the Leopold Museum, Vienna. From 2013 to 2015, he also was as interim museological director there. As curator and co-curator, Smola regularly conceives exhibitions with a thematic focus on international classical modernism, such as Alberto Giacometti. Pionier der Moderne (Leopold Museum, Vienna 2014/15) or Wolfgang Paalen. Der österreichische Surrealist in Paris und Mexiko (Belvedere, Vienna 2019/20), as well as focusing on Vienna around 1900. Smola was the main curator, along with Wolfgang Boeckl, of the major retrospective of the Fantastic Realists, which took place at the Belvedere in Vienna in 2008. Most recently, Smola developed the show Klimt. La Secessione e l’Italia, Museo di Roma (Rome 2021/22). Smola is (co-)editor and author of numerous publications and monographs, including various contributions on Surrealism and the Fantastic Realists, among others Arik Brauer – Gesamt.Kunst.Werk (2014) and Phantastischer Realismus (2008).
More contributions
Exhibition Tour
Diego Bianchi: Errores Irreales
Video
Diego Bianchi’s immersive sculptural installations reinterpret the concepts of sculpture and of the torso, taking seriously the sensitivity and distress of the human body as subjected to manifold pressures, and expanding and updating its forms of expression.
Exhibition Tour Diego Bianchi Exhibition Tour
Celina Eceiza: Ofrenda
Video
A metabolic force governs the growth of Celina Eceiza’s work, which involves textile collages, sculptures, paintings and drawings — both tiny and colossal in scale — as laborious as they are elementary. The artist combines handcrafted textile techniques and processes such as patchwork, found object collages and, more recently, chalk pastels, which give her images a new sense of fluidity.
Ausstellungsrundgang Celina Eceiza Annemarie Arzberger
dreamed awake
Slide show
For HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark the artist has developed her first own performative presentation, with a setting for her puppets with three scenes set in an imaginary spaceship, an exhibition, and the spaces that the scenes depict: the Schlouflaboar, the Houloudecks, and the Space Grotto Disco. The piece is a combination of physical theater and puppetry, performed by the artist together with her sister Katharina Arzberger and accompanied by musical interludes arranged by Manuel Obriejtan.
Slide Show Annemarie Arzberger Diego Bianchi
Errores Irreales
Slide show
Diego Bianchi (*1969 Buenos Aires, lives in Buenos Aires) is considered one of Argentina’s leading artists and has, in particular, updated the concept of sculpture. For his installative and performative exhibition Errores Irreales at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Bianchi has assembled a selection of his sculptures that play with the concept of the body.
Slide show Diego Bianchi Diego Bianchi
Errores Irreales
Performance
Slide show
Errores Irreales is only truly activated by the performance staged by Diego Bianchi himself in order to complete his theatrical installation, which takes physicality and its limits to a new level.
Diego Bianchi, Performance Celina Eceiza
Ofrenda
Slide show
Ofrenda [Offering] presents a way of inhabiting a space as if the architecture were a body, breathing erratically, changing states as you pass from one room to the next. The rigidity of the building collapses as the walls are draped in thousands of metres of fabric joined together through the collective and timeless action of sewing, until they form a single smooth surface, sensitive to the slightest change.
Slide show Celina Eceiza Abaseh Mirvali
Artistic Director, viennacontemporary
Video
The conversation between Abaseh Mirvali, director of viennacontemporary, and Sandro Droschl spans Diego Bianchi’s current exhibition and Celina Eceiza’s work in the context of Argentine art history to Mirvali’s many years of expertise and her international career. At the same time, her central role in the dynamic and innovative viennacontemporary 2025 was highlighted.
Abaseh Mirvali Talk Morning Séance
alias Simone Borghi
Video
Italian composer and sound artist Simone Borghi, alias Morning Séance, expands Celina Eceiza’s “soft museum” in her exhibition Ofrenda at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark with his atmospheric, constantly changing music, using his musical performance to enable visitors to experience physicality, space, and perception in new ways.
Morning Séance alias Simone Borghi