Artists / Gallery

For decades the painter Rudolf Hausner was dedicated to the process of self-discovery. Again and again he depicted his alter ego Adam, who does not only represent him, but the whole mankind.

Hausner was born in 1914 in Vienna. From 1931 to 1936 he studied at the Academy of Fine ArtsVienna with Carl Fahringer and Karl Sterrer.

In the beginning he painted expressionist pictures in the tradition of van Gogh and Cézanne. 1938 the Reich Chamber of Culture (Reichskulturkammer) laid an embargo on exports on these art works. 1941 Rudolf Hausner was called to military service for unified armed forces of Nazi Germany (Deutsche Wehrmacht). In the following year he had first experiences with projection of the unconscious in a block house in the Russian Tatra.

1946 he founded a surrealistic group together with Edgar Jené, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter und Fritz Janschka within the Austrian Art-Club, that was later also joined by Anton Lehmden and Arik Brauer. During the first exhibition in the foyer of the Konzerthaus Vienna the organisers were forced by the protests of visitors to temporary take down the painting "Aporic Ballet".

1959 the Vienna School of Phantastic Realism (Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus) was founded. Through his special glaze-technique Hausner achieved a particular glow in his paintings: the final expression resulted from the concurrence of several transparent layers of colour – these produced a smooth surface with illusionist depth effect.

In the same year Rudolf Hausner took part in a big group exhibition in Upper Belvedere in Vienna and also at Documenta II in Kassel. Many international exhibitions followed and he became a professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Hamburg and 1968 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

Rudolf Hausner was married four times and had three daughters, one of them is the painter Xenia Hausner.