Offered by Galerie Latham
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Mixed media on paper/cardboard
1970s (the mat hides the second number)
Visual dimensions: H. 53 x W. 75 cm
Eva Fuchs, (born Eva Christina Postl on November 21, 1941 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, painter, jewelry and fashion designer. The discovery of her painter grandmother's painting materials contributed decisively to her desire to become an artist herself. Eva, who was only 15 years old at the time, met a young painter on the rise, Ernst Fuchs - 12 years her senior - who gave her private lessons and trained her in nature and nude drawing, teaching her the techniques of oil painting of the old masters. She accompanied Ernst Fuchs to Paris and discovered the artistic world there in the late 1950s. After the Côte d'Azur, Belgium and Italy, the couple married in 1961. They lived in Vienna and had four children. In 1973, Eva-Christina created her first children's book "Album der Fuchs-Family" with texts and pictures by Ernst, but especially by Eva Fuchs and the children, which was voted the best children's book of the year. In addition to her work as a painter, the multidisciplinary artist also established herself as a fashion and jewelry designer. She has always considered her fashion designs to be works of art in their own right, calling them "artistic body costumes". In 1993, she founded a fashion company "Hoffmann's Olympia - Art Design & Styling". At that time, the main focus of her creative activity was on the design of opulent jewelry. In 1992, Eva Fuchs created a collection of fourteen pieces of jewelry for the famous jeweler Wagner in Vienna: this "Moonlight Collection", which was the result of a mystical reflection on the omnipresent influence of the moon on women, attracted national and international attention. In 1997, the artist's first major solo exhibition opened at the Looshaus in Vienna, with 30 oil paintings, watercolours, drawings and numerous jewellery designs. In 2003, the Studio Fayer in Vienna presented a major solo exhibition of the artist, entitled "Angels and Mystical Landscapes", which showed his various "angelic cycles" and "mystical landscapes of the end of time, with their inexplicable celestial bodies, comets and "Crop Circles", in reference to the Apocalypse of John: "... and I saw a new heaven and a new earth..." (ref. Anja Schmidt, "Kultur-Schatulle", No. 16 / 19 April 2003).
Eva Fuchs is still active artistically today and paints in her two studios, in Vienna and near Reichenau an der Rax (Austria). Her painting, which had long remained in the shadow of that of her husband Ernst Fuchs, has gained greater appreciation in recent decades. Religion and mysticism have always played a major role in the artist's inspiration: her Catholic education and her attendance at a convent school, her extensive knowledge of the Bible and the psalms are at the origin of some of her recurring motifs, all taken from Christian mythology. The New Testament, in particular, served as references, to which she added esoteric motifs. Myths related to sexuality play a central role in her work, which is often cyclical. In the Angel Cycles, in the 1960s and 1970s, men are at the centre, while in later periods, women are more prominent, sometimes in the form of self-portraits. Eva Fuchs developed a kind of ideal naturalism in which nature is "improved to perfection", as in an "inner process of reverie". Her themes seem to result more from her subconscious than from a conscious choice. The famous Viennese painter Hundertwasser, admiring Eva Fuchs' painting talent, recommended the artist, in his capacity as advisor to the Austrian Post Office Committee, for the design of a special Europe stamp, made in 2004 from the oil painting "Frühlingswiese" (Spring Meadow). This painting had previously been auctioned on 31 January 1997 for 200,000 Austrian schillings (14,534 euros). "Exhibitionism and self-presentation are simply part of my talent": this quote from Eva Fuchs (in the Austrian magazine "Diva", portrait by Elfi Oberhuber, 2001) proves that one of the ways for the artist to emerge from her husband's shadow was to establish herself, in the 1990s and 2000s, as a brilliant and provocative personality in Viennese society. Her sometimes very revealing opera ball gowns were often discussed by the media, a celebrity then used by Eva Fuchs to engage in charity projects.
