I met Ernst Fuchs for the first time in the year1973 on the occasion of an exhibition of his works in the "Baukunst"in Cologne. As a person he was of great interest to me at once; I wasjust as impressed by his works that I encountered there in theoriginals for the first time. Fuchs proved to be very open with meand confessed that as a child he had collected postcards of my works.So we hit if off quickly and saw each other regularly in Paris,Düsseldorf or Vienna.
What prejudices me in favor of Fuchs is his greatintelligence, the enormous range of his reading and his scintillatingphantasy which gushes forth like a long pent up fountain andenthusiastically carries everything along with it; it never seems torun dry. In him one sees a culture of a three thousand year oldheritage that he represents in his works. The earliest beginnings ofwestern culture in the two-river country of Mesopotamia, that of theBabylonians and of the Assyrians, are present in him just as areclassical Greece and the medieval mysticism of the Kabala. Incontrast to my works, those of Fuchs have a strong literarybackground that characterizes his world of motifs, for whatever insculpture cannot be represented in a thematic sense can neverthelessbe a rewarding task in painting.
If one follows Fuchs openly and readily, then hewill easily arrive at the intellectual origins of Europe and itsreligious situations, which did not spring completely from the headof Zeus, but were formed by an evolution with many dreams, manyerrors and many personal sacrifices.
Fuchs is a phenomenal sketch artist and since hisyouth has been a paragon of talent. His painting can be compared tothat of the Old Masters in his command of technique. In hismanipulations of etching techniques he has advanced so far that hecan effortlessly employ them in order to give shape to hisimagination. His lines, his inventions and his ornamentalembellishments are a miraculous oriental inheritance that he carriesin himself. Fuchs is so noble that he cannot live without figures.Yet he has nevertheless not forgotten ornamentation. Everywhere thereis a plantlike or geometric artistic invention which, however, is notforced or blundered away, but it becomes a question of an experiencedconnection to the metaphorical. When I visited Fuchs once at hishome, the art nouveau villa of Otto Wagner in Vienna, he said to me,"I strive for the total work of art; everything else is fragmentary."If Fuchs did not have this talent for the whole picture, then hewould never have had a feeling for the Villa Wagner. He is full ofculture through and through, and his foundation in this culture isexpressed in the interior decoration of the villa. Fuchs hasfurnished it most extensively himself with his own tapestries,fabrics, furniture, pictures, sculptures and other objects ofeveryday life. His effort to create the total work of art in whichthe different arts are united would not be conceivable without hisnever flagging work. He is an indefatigable worker who has theability to paint or to draw and almost simultaneously to complementsuch activity with writing poetry, sketching or composing music. Theartistic element promotes the poetic and vice versa.
Thus Fuchs also undertakes no journey withoutstoring up material for new projects along in his luggage, be it ahalf prepared etching plate or a manuscript which he still wants toedit. Steadfastly Fuchs finds himself in a state of creative unrestwhich drives him from creation to creation. He is intoxicated withhis work, not by drugs. Ernst Fuchs is constantly in the one frame ofmind: to create something great.
(1976/1983)
An excerpt from the book The CollectedWritings by Arno Breker.
Translated from the German by Dr. Benjiman D. Webb.
Copyright C 1987 Edition MARCO/ABSI, 10545 Main Street, Clarence, NewYork 14031 (USA).