Vienna School of Fantastic Realism

The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism (German: Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus) is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. It includes Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, all students of Professor Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts where also Zeev Kun studied in Gütersloh's class. It was Gütersloh's emphasis on the techniques of the Old Masters that gave the fantastic realist painters a grounding in realism (expressed with a clarity and detail some have compared to early Flemish painting) combined with religious and esoteric symbolism. Older members of the group were Rudolf Hausner, Kurt Regschek and Fritz Janschka who emigrated to the US in 1949. Kurt Regschek, who had helped organize the early exhibitions of the group left the group in 1965. Hausner, Fuchs, Hutter, Brauer and Lehmden were referred to as "The Big Five" who subsequently held successful exhibitions worldwide with international recognition from 1965 onward.