Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner is a central figure in the Vienna school of Fantastic Realism. His connections with the other members was not just through the Academy of Fine Arts, but also the Art Club, which was very important in the postwar years. Hausner finished his studies in Vienna before the war, as he was some years older than Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden, and Helmut Leherb.

It is likely that this difference in age led to his selection as the only group member to participate in documenta II (1959). There, as in Vienna, abstract art of various kinds was predominant, but there were also some figurative works on show, if less prominently. The painters of the informel movement and abstract expressionists were presented at the central venue, and figurative works in the Orangerie, the war damage to which had not yet been repaired. On the one side, therefore, stood a hegemony of abstraction, with names like Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning together with their European counterparts Wols, Willi Baumeister, and Piet Mondrian, contrasted with figurative works by Max Ernst, Karel Appel, and also Rudolf Hausner. The general reception of documenta II, that it focused on promoting abstract art with the USA leading the way, is certainly not wrong, but other trends were also included.

In the same year there was a legendary exhibition at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, at which by way of a reaction to a critical review by Johann Muschik the name Fantastic Realism was finally coined for the movement. In the following year, Hausner painted the work on show here, Der Abend (The Evening) (1960), using a mixed technique of tempera and resin paint. Today it is owned by the Artothek des Bundes and loaned to mumok – Museum der Moderne Stiftung Ludwig Wien.

The work shows four geometrical bodies in front of a blue, red, and orange background, which is divided in two by a horizontal line. Although the shapes of these bodies are relatively simple and constructivist, they can be seen as the tops of towers on parts of which the light is shining. The entire work is like a study of light in which the artist shows his interest in one of the classical themes in painting. Here, as in other works in this exhibition, we can see how the painter was true to his own style, continuing to refer to the traditions of painting and not allowing the powerful influence of abstraction to distract him. This can also be seen in the technique that Hausner used. He applied several layers of resin paint over one another, using the craftsmanship of the old masters, while at the same time raising questions about the art of composition. 

Hausner’s painter colleague Arik Brauer described this long and complicated process of up to ten different steps as follows: ​“Due to the long time that the artist and his picture spend together, a kind of father-child relationship arises. As time passes, the painter discovers more and more what his child needs and what might be harmful. The dreaded ​‘painting to death’ only occurs if this was a stillborn child from the outset. […] This is particularly true for the conceptual process. It is all about intensifying the original idea and sticking to the same line.” With this work, Hausner has actually taken an approach that is typical of the school of Fantastic Realism. The element that is taken from reality can be seen here in the colors of a landscape and of buildings, in a composition that might be called expressive and that is driven more by the idea of an independent creation than a depiction of reality.

 

1. Arik Brauer, ​“Anleitung zur Schichten-Malerei,“ in Die Phantasten, ed. Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Österreichs, exh. cat. Künstlerhaus Wien, Vienna 1990, p. 99.