Surreal Labyrinth

Original lithograph on arches, 1970
Edition number 139 of 150

Image Size: 12.5” x 15.35”
Sheet Size: 19.75” x 25.5”

Published by Pierre & Genevieve Argillet

One of Vienna’s most beloved modern artists, Arik Brauer is renowned for his captivating surrealistic paintings inspired by Jewish mystical traditions. Brauer was a founding member of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism, along with painters Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, and Anton Lehmden. The school’s works depicted curious creatures rendered with the painterly gravitas of the Old Masters. A survivor of World War II, Brauer studied and later taught at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Dense with oneiric imagery, his vibrant works have been extensively exhibited in his home city; the Leopold Museum mounted a major survey in 2014. Brauer expanded his practice in the 1980s to encompass projects like murals, mosaics, and painted tiles. He was also an accomplished singer, songwriter, poet, and dancer.

Painter, singer, and songwriter Arik Brauer is renowned for his Surrealist paintings inspired by Jewish mystical traditions and dream imagery. With painters Wolfgang Hutter, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, and Anton Lehmden, Brauer was a founding member of the Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus (“Vienna School of Fantastic Realism”)—an artistic movement blending the techniques of Old Master paintings with religious and esoteric symbolism to create magical new worlds.

Brauer’s paintings are heavily influenced by his childhood in Vienna under the Nazi regime and the subsequent rise of National Socialism, as well as by religious texts such as the Torah, the Haggadah, and the Old Testament. For Brauer, “Fantastic Realism” involved implicating the viewer in surreal and authentic scenes. Paintings such as My Father in Winter (1983), which depicts Brauer’s father walking through a snowy expanse wrapped in blue cloak that undulates in oceanic waves with a yellow flower-like Star of David radiating golden light from his chest, reflect his embrace of traditional landscape painting, Jewish history, and mysticism.