Art-Club was an association of artists during the

postwar period A post-war or postwar period is the interval immediately following the end of a war. The term usually refers to a varying period of time after World War II, which ended in 1945. A post-war period can become an interwar period or interbellum, w ...

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, in 1946–1959.

History

Art-Club was formed with the intention of fighting for the autonomy of modern art. This rather late standpoint in art history should be viewed in the light of the conditions dictated by

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

art ideals right after

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

. The autonomy of the arts had been soiled by the concept of '' entartete Kunst'' and needed to be emphasized. For a decade marked by violence, the free picture had been oppressed as well as the free word.

Some groups

Unlike

Gruppe 47 Gruppe 47 (Group 47) was a group of participants in German writers' meetings, invited by Hans Werner Richter between 1947 and 1967. The meetings served the dual goals of literary criticism as well as the promotion of young, unknown authors. In a ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, the Austrian Art-Club was not specially aspired to literature, though pronounced writers like Ilse Aichinger and

Ernst Jandl Ernst Jandl (; 1 August 1925 – 9 June 2000) was an Austrian writer, poet, and translator. He became known for his experimental lyric, mainly sound poems (''Sprechgedichte'') in the tradition of concrete and visual poetic forms. Poetry Inf ...

were members, as was H. C. Artmann before he got more occupied by the distinctive

Wiener Gruppe The Wiener Gruppe (''Vienna Group'') was a small and loose avant-garde constellation of Austrian poets and writers, which arose from an older and wider postwar association of artists called Art-Club. The group was formed around 1953 under the infl ...

. (

Ingeborg Bachmann Ingeborg Bachmann (; 25 June 1926 – 17 October 1973) was an Austrian poet and author. She is regarded as one of the major voices of German-language literature in the 20th century. In 1963, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature b ...

however preferred Gruppe 47). Art-Club wanted to be a continuous platform for young painters, sculptors, authors and musicians.http://www.basis-wien.at/avdt/htm/053/00058677.htm Article from ''Der Standard'' (June 5, 2003) Different artist studios were meeting places as well as city cafés. Joint exhibitions could take place in

Wiener Secession The Vienna Secession (; also known as the Union of Austrian Artists or ) is an art movement, closely related to Art Nouveau, that was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, including Josef Hoff ...

. The idiom of one group of members reminded critics of

Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

. Johann Muschik characterized in the late 1950s these particular members ''Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus'' (

Vienna School of Fantastic Realism The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism () is a group of artists founded in Vienna in 1946. The group's name was coined in the 1950s by Johann Muskik, and the first exhibition was in 1959 at the Vienna Belvedere. This Austrian movement has similari ...

). Abstract painting occurred as well, for instance in the works of the young

Hundertwasser Friedrich Stowasser (15 December 1928 – 19 February 2000), better known by his pseudonym Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (), was an Austrian visual artist and architect who also worked in the field of environmental protection ...

, but also in a group called Hundsgruppe with among others

Arnulf Rainer Arnulf Rainer (born 8 December 1929) is an Austrian painter noted for his abstract informal art. Rainer was born in Baden, Austria. During his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism. In 1950, he founded the ''Hundsgruppe'' (''dog gr ...

and

Maria Lassnig Maria Lassnig (8 September 1919 – 6 May 2014) was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness".Attias, Lauri''Maria Lassnig'', ''Frieze'', May 1996. She was the first female artist to win the Gran ...

Well-known members

Friedrich Achleitner Friedrich Achleitner (23 May 1930 – 27 March 2019) was an Austrian poet and architecture critic. As a member of the Wiener Gruppe, he wrote concrete poems and experimental literature. His magnum opus is a multi-volume documentation of 20th-cent ...

* Ilse Aichinger * H. C. Artmann * Konrad Bayer * Maria Biljan-Bilger *

Arik Brauer Arik Brauer (; 4 January 1929 – 24 January 2021) was an Austrian painter, printmaker, poet, dancer, singer-songwriter, stage designer, architect, and academic teacher. Brauer, from a family of Jewish emigrants, grew up in Vienna under the N ...

* Jeannie Ebner *

Paul Flora Paul Flora (6 June 1922 – 15 May 2009) was an Austrian caricaturist, graphic artist, and illustrator, known for his black ink line drawings. "Flora was one of Europe's most profiled illustrators since the 1960s. He worked for British newspapers ...

Hans Fronius Hans Fronius (12 September 1903 - 21 March 1988) was an Austrians, Austrian Painting, painter and illustration, illustrator. He was born in Sarajevo, which was then a territory of Austria-Hungary (now Bosnia and Hercegovina). His father was descen ...

* Ernst Fuchs * Elfriede Gerstl * Albert Paris Gütersloh * Rudolf Hausner *

Wolfgang Hollegha Wolfgang Hollegha (4 March 1929 – 2 December 2023) was an Austrian painter of the post-war generation. His œuvre and artistic approach is related to Abstract expressionism, American Abstract Expressionism and this essential quality is character ...

Friedensreich Hundertwasser Friedrich Stowasser (15 December 1928 – 19 February 2000), better known by his pseudonym Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser (), was an Austrian visual artist and architect who also worked in the field of environmental protection ...

Wolfgang Hutter Wolfgang Hutter (December 13, 1928 – September 26, 2014) was a painter, draughtsman, printmaker and stage designer. Hutter's imagery is characterised by an artificial paradise of gardens and fantastical fairytale-like scenes. His work is said to ...

Anton Lehmden Anton Lehmden (2 January 1929 – 7 August 2018) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Lehmden was a co-founder, together with Ernst Fuchs, Maître Leherb (Helmut Leherb), Rudolf Hausner, Arik Brauer, Fritz Janschka and Wo ...

Friederike Mayröcker Friederike Mayröcker (20 December 1924 – 4 June 2021) was an Austrian writer of poetry and prose, radio plays, children's books and dramatic texts. She experimented with language, and was regarded as an avant-garde poet, and as one of the l ...

* Josef Mikl * Ferry Radax *

* Rudolph von Ripper * Hans Weigel * Susanne Wenger

Footnotes

Literature

* ''Die Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus'', exh. cat. (Hannover, Kestner-Ges., 1965) {{Authority control Culture in Vienna