For decades the painter Rudolf Hausner was dedicated to the process of self-discovery. Again and again he depicted his alter ego Adam, who does not only represent him, but the whole mankind.
Hausner was born 1914 in Vienna. From 1931-36 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with Carl Fahringer and Karl Sterrer.
In the beginning he painted expressionist pictures in the tradition of van Gogh and Cézanne. 1938 an embargo on exports was laid on these by the Reich Chamber of Culture. 1941 Rudolf Hausner was called to military service for Deutsche Wehrmacht. In the following year he had first experiences with projection of the unconscious in a block house in the Russian Tatra.
1946 he founded a surrealistic group together with Edgar Jené, Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter und Fritz Janschka within the Austrian Art-Club, that was later also joined by Anton Lehmden and Arik Brauer. During the first exhibition in the foyer of the Vienna Concerthouse the organisers were forced by the protests of visitors to temporary take down the painting “Aporisches Ballett”.
1959 the Vienna School of Phantastic Realism was founded. Through his special glaze-technique Hausner achieved a particular glow in his paintings: the final expression resulted from the concurrence of several transparent layers of colour – these produced a smooth surface with illusionist depth effect.
In the same year Rudolf Hausner took part in a big group exhibition in Upper Belvedere in Vienna and also in Documenta II in Kassel. Many international exhibitions followed and he became a professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Hamburg and 1968 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Rudolf Hausner was married four times and had three daughters, one of them is the painter Xenia Hausner.
