Arik Brauer

Vienna 1929 - 2021 Vienna

Arik Brauer was born in Vienna in 1929. He was the son of a jewish shoemaker and only survived the pogrom by hiding. From 1945 to 1951, Arik Brauer studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Robin Christian Andersen, Josef Dobrowsky, Herbert Boeckl and Albert Paris Gütersloh amongst his teachers.
Together with Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Wolfgang Hutter and Rudolf Hausner, he founded the “Viennese School of Phantastic Realism”. This School focused on the techniques of the Old Masters and developed an objective art. The detailed painting in layers is especially characterizing for Brauers creative work. He also incorporates the political events of the time into his paintings.
From 1947 to 1951, he studies singing at the musical school of Vienna as well. From 1954 to 1955, the artist lived in Israel. In 1957, his wife Naomi Dahabani and he moved to Paris and they founded a singing duo together. During this time, Brauer had his first successful exhibtions in the galleries Cordier and Flinker, in the Salon Mai and in the Musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
In the 1970s, Arik Brauer worked on an oil painting cycle called “The History of the Persecution of the Jewish People” and created set designs for the opera in Paris. From 1986 to 1997, he taught as an university professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Arik Brauer was honoured with many prizes and awards, including the Prize of the City of Vienna for Fine Art and the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art.