On Monday, November 9, Austrian painter Ernst Fuchs, co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, died at the age of 85 at a hospital in Viena.
Tillmann Fuchs, Ernst' son confirmed the news that his father passed away but gave no cause as to the cause of his father's death.
Ernst Fuchs, was the only child of a Jewish antique dealer and a catholic seamstress. He was born in Vienna.
To escape the Holocaust during the Nazi era, he was baptized as a catholic and his work over his career progressively focused on religious symbolism.
He was one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Fuchs was an Austrian painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, architect, stage designer, composer, poet and singer.
He acquired the derelict Otto Wagner Villa in Hütteldorf in 1972, which he restored and transformed. In 1988, the villa was inaugurated as the Ernst Fuchs Museum.
His brightly coloured works that connected with allegorical and religious themes, along with his unique personal style of a full beard and patterned caps sets him apart, it was his mark of distinction.
In 1957, after visiting the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem, he started what became his most famous painting, the large-scale Last Supper.
He was accepted to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at the age of 15, where he met his fellow artist Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter and Rudolf Hausner.
Together they established the artistic movement known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
The Austrian Symbolist artist named Gustav Klimt- painter, known for his vivid and textured works such as The Kiss - and who became renown for his works that emphasized texture as well as color was among Fuch's influence.
He became involved in designing stage sets and costumes for the operas of Mozart and Richard Wagner including Die Zauberflöte, Parsifal, and Lohengrin in 1974.
In 1970, he took a stab at industrial design with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Fuchs decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's Studio Linie.
One of the first Western artists honored at the State Russian Museum in St.Petersburg, they gave Fuchs a retrospective exhibition in 1993.
