Arik Brauer

Who is Arik Brauer?

Arik Brauer is an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer and stage designer. He resides in Vienna and Ein Hod, Israel. Brauer is a co-founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, together with Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden.

Erich ‘Arik’ Brauer is the child of Lithuanian Jewish emigrants. His post-war artistic training was in Vienna, under the supervision of Albert Paris von Gütersloh. Gütersloh promoted Brauer's work within the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism circle of artists, which had formed in the mid-1950s from a post-1946 Viennese surrealist group that had included Brauer along with Edgar Jené, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter, Rudolf Hausner, Anton Lehmden, and Fritz Janschka. Despite the prevailing art-world taste for abstraction in the 1950s and early 1960s, Brauer’s work successfully blended high craftsmanship and surrealism in ways that gained him international attention. In 1982, he had breakthrough solo shows in the USA.

Brauer has also designed architectural projects in Austria and Israel. The façades and interiors of his buildings are covered with fantastical mosaics, murals and painted tiles. He also designed the first United Buddy Bear for Austria in 2002.