Hans Priem (20th Century) Austrian, Fantastic Realism Oil on Masonite. Depicts a highly detailed older man raising a glass to the heavens. Style is adherent to the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. Attribution on plaque on frame bottom middle: "H. Priem." 

Overall Size: 12 x 10 in. 

Sight Size: 9 /34 x 7 3/4 in. 

#4456 

The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism (Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus) is a group of artists founded in Vienna, Austria in 1946. They did not give themselves a formal name at first, and the label was coined in the 1950s by art critic Johann Muskik. Their first major exhibition was in 1959 at the Vienna Belvedere. The movement had similarities to Surrealism in its use of religious and esoteric symbolism and also the choice of a naturalistic style, countering the prevalence of abstract art movements at the time. Subjects were primarily figural, often incorporating luminescence and highly detailed qualities to portray every-day life and individuals, warts and all. Known artists in the movement include Hans Priem, Ernst Fuchs, Helmut Leherb, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hutter, Anton Lehmden, and Israeli artist Zeev Kun, all of whom were first students of Professor Albert Paris Gütersloh at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. Gütersloh’s emphasis on the techniques of the Old Masters gave the “fantastic” painters a grounding in realism, similar to early Flemish artists such as Jan van Eyck. Some older members of the group, including Rudolf Hausner, Kurt Regschek and Fritz Janschka, emigrated to the United States in 1949, where Kurt Regschek helped organize the earliest American exhibitions of the group in 1965. Hausner, Fuchs, Hutter, Brauer and Lehmden were referred to as “The Big Five” who subsequently held exhibitions internationally. As the movement sought to avoid formal distinctions in contrast to the more territorial Surrealists, they eventually dissolved some time in the late 1970s, although their influence can be felt in modern works from Austria and abroad where they exhibited, including Israel, the United States, and South America.