Fuchs, Ernst (1930-2015), Genius and Animal, 1966

Ernst Fuchs(1930 Vienna - 2015 Vienna), Genius and Animal , 1966, Weis 94. Etching, 22,5 x 17,7 cm (platemark), 29,7 x 28,8 cm (sheet size), 35 x 34 cm (frame), numbered 97/99 in pencil lower left, signed by hand in pencil lower right, framed in a golden border.

- Precise and strong impression, paper a little bit darkened and brownish due to the previous framing.

Exposé as PDF

- Eros and Drive -

The etching was included in the limited edition of 99 copies of Ernst Fuchs' artistic manifesto 'Architectura caelestis', published in 1966 by Galerie Sydow, Frankfurt. This already illustrates the print's programmatic character for Ernst Fuchs' artistic self-understanding.

In front of a black background we see a young woman in an elegant pose. She occupies the entire picture space and seems to grow straight out of the upper edge of the picture. Her body is bared upwards, revealing the fullness of her physical beauty, while she herself seems to gaze into the distance. In her composition, Fuchs has recourse to the contrapuntal technique of antiquity, which he has sharpened in a Mannerist manner: Her right leg detaches itself from the ground, suggesting a forward step, and the lower body performs a movement in this direction, while the upper body swings back and the head is fixed in strict profile. In this way, the figure performs an elegant S-swing, which the British printmaking virtuoso William Hogarth called the Line of Beauty .

Behind the woman, also across the picture, is a monstrous mythical creature which, like the Beauty and the Beast, contrasts with the graceful elegance of the young beauty. The opposition formulated by the title of the print, Genius and Animal, is also evident in the contrast between vertical and horizontal and light and dark. And yet the animal's body has its own elegance through the ornamental curves, culminating in the S-shape of its tail, with which it visually touches the woman's leg. The curves of the animal's body, kept in the same tonality, are echoed in the folds of the woman's dress and the design of her legs. The contrast is therefore also one of belonging together. The animal's hind leg forms the ground, as it were, from which the foot of the genius emerges and seems to rise.

The powerful animal looking at the woman is the guardian of the genius, with whom it is at the same time intimately connected. The animal and the genius are related like the drive to the inherent divine eros which, according to Plato, is the artistic inspirational force. The dynamic of this fertile tension between genius and animal, between drive and eros, is further intensified by the ornamentally fluctuating black ground.

About the artist

The young Ernst Fuchs chose as his baptismal name 'Ernst Peter Paul', an homage by the then twelve-year-old to Peter Paul Rubens, who would continue to inspire him. He received his first art lessons from his godmother's brother, Alois Schiemann. Later he attended the St. Anna School of Painting in Vienna, and in 1946 he was admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied until 1950 under Robin Andersen and Albert Paris Gütersloh, the intellectual father of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism. After travelling extensively, Fuchs spent time at the Dormition Monastery on Mount Zion in Israel, where he became deeply involved in the iconography and spiritual painting techniques that influenced him. In his book Architectura Caelestis (1966), he states that many of his motif discoveries are based on visionary experiences, which he later emphasised:

“It is not uncommon for me to go into a trance while painting, my consciousness fading in favour of a medial suspended state in which I feel guided and moved by a sure hand, doing things of which I have little conscious knowledge. This state can sometimes last for several hours. Afterwards, everything I have created in this state seems to me as if someone else had done it.”

- Ernst Fuchs

In 1962 Fuchs returned to Vienna, was appointed professor at the Academy and became probably the most influential protagonist of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, which had presented its first group exhibition at the Belvedere in 1959. Apart from Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Rudolf Hausner, Anton Lehmden, Helmut Leherb and Gütersloh's son Wolfgang Hutter were the main representatives of this artistic movement.

In 1972 Fuchs acquired the Otto Wagner Villa, which he turned into his private museum in a congenial continuation of Viennese Art Nouveau. The 1970s also saw the development of an artistic friendship with Salvator Dalí and Arno Breker, which Dalí summed up in 1975 with the words: "We are the golden triangle of art: Breker-Dalí-Fuchs. You can rotate us any way you like, we are always on top".

Fuchs also confirmed himself as a singer of spiritual poetry and, from the 1990s onwards, devoted himself increasingly to his fantastic architecture. The idea of a total work of art that he pursued in the Otto Wagner Villa was also reflected in the design of everyday objects. A BMW 635 CSi, for example, became a "fire fox on a hare hunt" according to his design, and the Rosenthal porcelain factory produced numerous products based on his designs.

In his art, Ernst Fuchs draws from the abundance of tradition, from which his genius gives birth to a completely new semantics:

“Insights haunt me that I had not hoped to find. Grasped by this spirituality, I also understand what the great insights of other painters were that aroused my admiration. An understanding of art and the knowledge it conveys grips me, as if my mind had entered into a discourse with all artists of all epochs.”

- Ernst Fuchs

Selected Bibliography

Source texts

Ernst Fuchs: Architectura Caelestis - Images Of The Hidden Prime Of Styles (Die Bilder des verschollenen Stils), Frankfurt a. M. 1966.

ders.: Im Zeichen der Sphinx. Schriften und Bilder. Hrsg. v. Walter Schurian, München 1978.

ders.: Aura. Ein Märchen der Sehnsucht, München 1981.

ders.: Phantastisches Leben. Erinnerungen, Berlin 2001.

Catalog raisonné

Helmut Weis: Ernst Fuchs. Das graphische Werk. 1967 - 1980, München 1980.

Literature

Gerhard Habarta: Ernst Fuchs. Das Einhorn zwischen den Brüsten der Sphinx. Eine Biographie, Graz 2001.

Friedrich Haider (Hrsg.): Ernst Fuchs. Zeichnungen und Graphik aus der frühen Schaffensperiode mit Hinweisen auf die Malerei 1942-1959, Wien 2003.

Agnes Husslein-Arco (Hrsg.): Phantastischer Realismus. Arik Brauer, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter, Wien 2008.