The Jewish artist Arik Brauer narrowly escaped the horror of the Holocaust, yet as an artist he pursued a dreamy, fairytale-like approach, translating current events with great subtlety into a richly-coloured pictorial and symbolic language combining Western and Oriental influences.
(...) Continue readingArik Brauer – Persecution by the National Socialists
Arik Brauer was born Erich Brauer on 4 January 1929 in Vienna. His untroubled childhood in the proletarian Viennese suburb of Ottakring was abruptly ended by the takeover of the National Socialists who interned his Jewish father Simon ‘SImche’ Brauer, of Lithuania origins, throwing the family into economic hardship. Although his mother was not Jewish, Arik Brauer himself was classed as a Jew and was forced to wear the yellow badge, and only survived the Second World War and the Nazis by hiding. With the horrors he had experienced still on his mind, he briefly joined the KPÖ (Communist Party of Austria) after the war, but soon became disillusioned and quickly turned his back on the communist party.
Studies in Vienna; foundation of the Schule des Phantastischen Realismus (Viennese School of Fantastic Realism)
His career as an artist was better, which Arik Brauer began by studying at the Vienna Academy of Arts with Albert Paris Gütersloh and Robin Christian Andersen. Brauer laid the groundwork for his artistic career already in these early years when he founded the famous School of Fantastic Realism with his friends Anton Lehmden, Wolfgang Hutter, Rudolf Hausner and Ernst Fuchs, of which Brauer would become its most important representative in the years that followed. The name was coined by the art critic Johann Muschik and refers to an art current close to Surrealism in Austria.
Marriage to Naomi Dahabani; first solo exhibition in Paris
Arik Brauer’s artistic interest focused not only on fine arts, but also music, and he studied singing at the Vienna Music School from 1947. From 1951 to 1954 he cycled through Africa and Europe, processing his experiences later in the song Reise nach Africa, and lived for a sort time in the mid-1950s in Israel. Back in Vienna, he appeared on stage at the Vienna Raimundtheater in 1956 as a dancer. In 1957 he married Naomi Dahabani, a Yemeni of Israeli origin and they performed a duet in Paris as the vocal ensemble Neomi et Arik Bar-Or. It was in the French capital that he also had his first solo exhibition, to great success.
Successful painter and singer
Arik Brauer returned with his wife to Vienna in 1964 and celebrated great success as a painter of Fantastic Realism, as well as a singer. He remained closely connected to Israel, where he turned a derelict ruin into an architectural work of art with the artists’ colony En Dod, with his view of architecture showing a significant closeness to Friedensreich Hundertwasser. As a musician, he touched the public in particular when singing in the Viennese dialect, won two gold records, and became an initiator of so-called Austropop, especially its political wing, and continued his art with teaching as a Full Professor at the Vienna Academy of Art from 1986 to 1997.
Arik Brauer had three daughters: Timna Brauer is a singer and Ruth Brauer-Kvam works as an actress. Arik died at the age of 92 in his hometown of Vienna surrounded by his family.
Arik Brauer - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
