Rudolf Hausner

Rudolf Hausner (Vienna, December 4, 1914 – February 25, 1995) was an Austrian painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. Hausner has been described as a "psychic realist" and "the first psychoanalytical painter" (Gunter Engelhardt).

Hausner studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1931 until 1936. During this period he also traveled around Europe, visiting England, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Egypt. After he was designated a 'degenerate' artist in 1938, exhibition of his work was banned in Germany. He was a soldier from 1941 until 1945. In 1942 he married Grete Czingely. Before allying himself with and co-founding the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism his works were mainly Expressionist-influenced images of suburbs, still lifes, and female models, most of which he destroyed.

In 1944, Hausner married Irene Schmied. During the last days of the second world war he was assigned to an air defense unit. After the war, he returned to his bomb-damaged studio and resumed work as an artist. In 1946 he founded a surrealist group together with Edgar Jené, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter and Fritz Janschka. They were later joined by Arik Brauer and Anton Lehmden. He joined the Art-Club and had his first one-man exhibition in the Konzerthaus, Vienna. A key work of this period, It's me! (1948; Vienna, Hist. Mus.), shows his awareness of Pittura Metafisica and Surrealism in a psychoanalytical painting where the elongated being in the foreground penetrates what was apparently a real landscape, until it tears like a backdrop; another painting, Forum of Inward-turned Optics (1948; Vienna, Hist. Mus.), is evidence of his ability to depict the subject in a realist style while simultaneously overturning the laws of one-point perspective. He married Hermine Jedlicka in 1951; their daughter Xenia Hausner, also an artist, was born the same year. After working on the painting for six years, he completed his masterpiece, The Ark of Odysseus, in 1956. The Ark of Odysseus (1948–51 and 1953-6; Vienna, Hist. Mus.), depicts the hero as a self-portrait and was a precursor to the series of Adam paintings in which Hausner painted his own features.

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