Fantasy Surrealism
Margit Balla is a Hungarian artist, graphic artist, illustrator, director, stage designer and costume designer.
She studied typography at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest, mainly making posters, book illustrations, later working more and more with pictorial graphics. In her posters Margit Balla combines impressions from old prints with contemporary trends such as pop art. Her figurative compositions are easily recognizable by her special surrealistic drawing style.
Since 2000, Margit Balla has been working as a production designer for the Budapest Puppet Theater.
Jonas Burgert is a German figurative artist living and working in Berlin.
Jonas Burgert graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin and studied as a graduate student (Meisterschueler) under Prof. Dieter Hacker in Berlin, and his work has been characterized from the very beginning by its vivid originality.
Burgert's paintings are filled with fantastic figures of the most unimaginable proportions. In the spaces of his panoramic paintings, one is immersed in a visual chaos of narrative layers, amidst mysterious events, strange figures and creatures. Jonas Burgert's large-format paintings are dominated by the grotesque, the bizarre and the surreal. Nightmarish zombie-like figures invade his pictorial worlds, frightening and appealing at the same time.
Since 1998 his work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions around the world, Jonas Burgert is now very successful and his works are very willingly acquired by many galleries.
Fabrizio Clerici was an Italian painter, draftsman, illustrator, scenographer and architect.
Clerici earned a degree in architecture and was greatly influenced by antiquities, Renaissance and Baroque painting and architecture. In 1943, Clerici held his first solo exhibition at the Galleria dell'Arte Cairola in Milan, featuring drawings, watercolors, lithographs and etchings. His first book illustrations belong to the same period.
In 1947, Clerici began a prolific career in theater, ballet and opera with his debut as a stage designer in a production of George Bernard Shaw's play Mrs. Warren's Profession. The following year he participated for the first time in the Venice Biennale. There he met Salvador Dalí and created the sets and costumes for Igor Stravinsky's Orpheus, which was performed at the La Fenice Theater. In 1949 he created large-scale architectural fantasy paintings.
The further life of the multifaceted artist Fabrizio Clerici was full of work in a variety of fields of art, creative successes and exhibitions. His work has been exhibited in many museums in the United States, including MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum, as well as in France, such as the Pompidou Center.
Lewis Carroll, real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was a British writer and photographer, philosopher and logician, and professor of mathematics.
In 1851 Lewis entered one of the best colleges in Oxford - Christ Church. Showing an extraordinary aptitude for mathematics, soon he was able to give lectures himself, and for the next quarter of a century he was a professor of mathematics at Oxford. In parallel with his studies, the young man began to compose short stories and poems, publishing them under a pseudonym.
And then he wrote the famous "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865) and "Alice in Looking-Glass" (Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871). These books quickly became popular, they were translated into numerous languages, and then repeatedly screened. The prototype of the main character was four-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the new dean of the college where Carroll taught. Lewis Carroll also wrote "The Knotty Story", a humorous poem "Hunting the Snark", "Mathematical Curiosities", "Sylvia and Bruno" and other books. Carroll himself considered his main work a slightly absurd novel-tale "Sylvia and Bruno" (1889-1893).
Under his real name, the writer-mathematician published scientific works on mathematics and logic, he also owns a number of popular books on entertaining mathematics. Lewis Carroll left Oxford only once - in 1867, visiting Russia as part of a delegation of the Anglican Church on the route St. Petersburg-Moscow-Nizhny Novgorod. This was Carroll's only overseas trip, and he described it in his Diary of a Trip to Russia 1867. Lewis Carroll was also a talented chess player and amateur inventor. Photography was also a big part of the writer's life.
Óscar Domínguez was a Spanish Surrealist painter and sculptor. He was born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, and later moved to Paris, where he became part of the Surrealist movement.
Domínguez's art was characterized by its dreamlike and surreal imagery, often featuring fantastic landscapes, strange creatures, and distorted human figures. He worked in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage, and was known for his use of automatic drawing and other Surrealist techniques.
In addition to his art, Domínguez was also involved in politics, and was a member of the French Communist Party. He fought in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Republican Army, and later lived in exile in Paris.
Domínguez's work was exhibited widely during his lifetime, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the Tate Gallery in London.
Today, Domínguez is considered one of the leading figures of the Surrealist movement, and his work continues to inspire artists around the world.
Erro, real name Guðmundur Guðmundsson, is a contemporary Icelandic painter.
Erro studied painting at the Reykjavik and Oslo Art Academies between 1952 and 1954. He then moved to Italy, where he studied mosaic art in Florence and Ravenna until 1958.
Erro participated in the Venice Biennale in 1986. In 1989 he donated a large part of his works to the Reykjavik Art Museum.
The style of the paintings created by Erro lies on the border between surrealism and pop art. The main theme of his paintings is the depiction of modern civilisation, its technical perfection and its inhumanity. He also uses comic book techniques and science fiction themes in his work.
Uwe Henneken is a German artist living and working in Berlin.
Henneken began his studies at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and completed his studies at the University of the Arts in Berlin. In his grotesque, amusing and fabulous paintings and sculptures, the artist transports the viewer into strange worlds. Especially impressive are the brightly colored landscapes, as in a surrealistic fever dream. In these psychedelic sets move figures unimaginable in reality, sometimes comic and cartoonish, sometimes tragic, and sometimes both at the same time.
Henneken has spent a lifetime researching the theme of shamanism and believes that the shaman is the prototype of the artist and therefore the contemporary artist is directly connected to his professional ancestor. Promoting the idea of otherworlds, through magical realism the artist brings magic to real life.
Benedikt Hipp is a German painter and sculptor who lives and works in Munich and Amsterdam.
Hipp studied at the academies of fine arts in Nuremberg, Munich and Bologna. Even during his studies he attracted attention with his characteristic works. His paintings and panels, some of them large format, are created in the technique of the old masters - oil paints on wooden panels and varnished.
For example, one of Hipp's latest works, the series "Ocean Bark" embodies an artistic confrontation with the last unexplored corner of our earth - the depths of the sea. These works are created as a result of a rather complex technological process and create a fantastic impression reminiscent of surrealism. Architecture, animals and people are alienated, united and presented in a disturbing, dreamlike way.
Benedikt Hipp is an extremely versatile artist who expresses himself in several genres. He has works on paper, collages and ink drawings, recently focusing on objects and sculpture as well as spatial installations.
In 2021, Hipp was awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship of the Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo, Germany's most renowned award for artists.
Franjo Klopotan is a Croatian surrealist painter.
Klopotan is considered a master of naive art in postwar Croatia. He began painting in 1959 and had his first solo exhibition in Zagreb in 1963. Later, during his stay in Germany, participating in exhibitions, he gained international fame.
Franjo Klopotan is a painter of waking dreams, bringing elements of surrealism and popular fantasy into his work.
Klopotan was a member of the Croatian Society of Naive Artists, the Croatian Society of Fine Artists and the Association of Croatian Artists.
Horst G. Loewel is a German-born painter who lives and works in Canada and Spain.
Loewel is a representative of the fantastical-surrealistic trend in art. He meticulously and realistically depicts landscapes of another universe filled with symbolism. Thanks to his boundless imagination, the artist shows us a fabulous, unreal world in which man has almost no place.
Leonardo Nierman, full name Leonardo Nierman Mendelejis, is a Mexican artist known mainly for his paintings and sculptures. His work is abstract yet still contains visible images of nature such as birds, water, lightning and more. His paintings are in pure colours, while his sculptures are usually in metal, often with a silver hue.
Antoine Piron-Meyer, also known as Agni, is a Swiss painter and sculptor.
He is one of the founders of the Vaisseau group, which is known for its murals in various countries, including Russia. As a teenager, Piron-Meyer was fascinated and inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch, whose motifs can be found in his work.
Andreas Schmitten is a German painter and sculptor living and working between Düsseldorf and Neuss, Germany.
The artist situates his interdisciplinary and diverse work between drawing, sculpture and installation, using attention-grabbing techniques from religion, theater and commodities. He is interested in issues related to the human being and its history. Andreas Schmitten is known for his extensive and highly complex installations in which figures, objects and interiors are used to create fantastic, surreal visual worlds. Lacquered surfaces, pale colors, and mannered, elegant forms characterize his perfectly executed works, which often transform rooms into unreal and fairytale-like settings.
Schmitten's work can currently be seen in the Waldfrieden Sculpture Park in Wuppertal and the Villa Ludwig in Aachen. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions.
Dasha Shishkina (Russian: Даша Шишкина) is an American artist originally from Russia.
She studied at the Parsons School of Design and became known for large-scale compositions in mylar that are populated by comic and grotesque characters in psychedelic scenes. In Shishkina's paintings, elegantly dressed women with blank faces sit cross-legged, stand behind counters, talk among themselves like at a ball, or reflect alone, lingering in erotically charged poses as if turning into each other. It all feels like a strange surreal dream, subtly sexual and violent, thought-provoking, simultaneously irritating and soothing.
Dasha Shishkina works in acrylic, gouache, pastel, pencil, graphite and ink, as well as creating etching prints. Her drawings are often applied to both sides of clear Mylar polyester film.
Dorothea Margaret Tanning was an American surrealist painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer and poet.
In 1935 Dorothea came to New York and worked as an advertising artist until she was inspired by the paintings of the famous Surrealists at an exhibition. She began to paint and exhibit and made numerous acquaintances among contemporary artists. In 1946 she married the artist Max Ernst, and this marriage lasted 30 years. They lived in Paris for a long time, and after his death in 1976, she returned to New York.
As an artist, Dorothea Tanning was self-taught, and her style was constantly changing. At first close to surrealism, by the late 1960s her paintings had become almost entirely abstract. Among her artistic accomplishments are paintings, prints, sculpture, stage design, costume and set designs for ballets, and her work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate Modern, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In the late 1980s, Tanning began writing poetry, and her work has subsequently been published in various publications. Her first collection of poems, A Table of Content, was published in 2004. The multifaceted and versatile artist died in New York City at the age of 101.
Joel-Peter Witkin is an American photographer who lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work often deals with themes such as death, corpses (and sometimes dismembered portions thereof), often featuring ornately decorated photographic models, including people with dwarfism, transgender and intersex persons, as well as people living with a range of physical features which Witkin is often praised for presenting in poses which celebrate and honor their physiques in an elevated, artistic manner. Witkin's complex tableaux often recall religious episodes or classical paintings.
Mac Zimmermann is a German painter, graphic artist and illustrator, one of the most important representatives of Surrealism in Germany.
He completed his studies at the Werkkunstschule for Applied Arts in his native Szczecin, then worked in Hamburg as a draftsman, stage designer and teacher at a private drawing school. In 1939 Mac Zimmermann moved to Berlin, where his first exhibition of fantasy paintings and drawings was held in 1940. In his works Zimmermann created a kind of mythology of our time, a mythology of nature and historical events.
