Brilliance. Beauty. Brauer.

A renowned museum is presenting a comprehensive Arik Brauer retrospective as the artist remains active.

Brauer – born in Vienna in 1929 – is still a source of energy and creativity. Over the years, the versatile artist sang commercially successful pop songs and designed opera stages as well as house fronts. However, his main focus has always been on painting.

The new Leopold Museum (www.leopoldmuseum.org) exhibition called “Arik Brauer. Gesamt.Kunst.Werk” features landmark creations by the artist whose family had to endure repression by the Nazi regime. Bible stories and worrying contemporary sociological developments always influenced Brauer. But some of his large paintings – as the special exhibit demonstrates – deal with the disastrous nuclear accident of Chernobyl and other traumatic occurrences.

“Arik Brauer. Gesamt.Kunst.Werk” (curators: Franz Smola, Alexandra Matzner) also includes sculptures and photographs showing Brauer’s family and the artist attending various public events such as the opening of an exhibition in 1971 – attended by Bruno Kreisky, the late Austrian chancellor.

::: The Austrian Culture Channel on Twitter: @accthomas