Fantastic Realism in Painting and Printmaking (School of Vienna, Since1946 to 2016)

Similar to Surrealism, Fantastic Realism takes shape within western art specially in painting and printmaking and consequently this outlook forms a specific importance, as primarily a group of Austrian artists started the initiative and are responsible for creation of astonishing fantastical works of art or in another word, dreamlike fantasies and due to this, they call these compositions Fantastic Realism.
Therefore the purpose of writing this article is manifesting and revealing the ideas of these  artists who congregated in Vienna in the last days of second world war. They display and expose their fears, worries and anxieties that had risen from the heart of war - considering Surrealism was slowly fading - which was the sign of pain and suffering of a divided society. Therefore to dive into the depth of these Austrian painters and printmakers' ideas and the reason behind formation of this style, in the current article, firstly the question of the research is answered which is: Did Fantastic Realism take shape and rise from consequences and impacts of second world war or did it come from other issues? Also as the findings for this research, it can be concluded that with no doubt, no element has been more influential in the existence of this style than the disasters of war that affected these artists and caused a great reaction from them. Lastly as the conclusion for this research it is concluded that not only this style was affected by the consequences of war but Sigmund Schlomo Freud the Austrian sociologists ideas have had a great impact.

The style of Fantastic Realism was created by a group of Austrian artists - with a deep dive in mysterious fantasies and repressed human desires. Consequently it transforms into dreamy and imaginative fictions. In fact we can see the breeding ground and basis of the fiction in variety of artworks such as the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch - Jerom fictions who believes in religious and moral ideas and pessimistic and melancholic scenes, or in the works of French Naive artist Henri Julien Felix Rousseau or in the works of the Russian artist Marc Zakharovich Chagall who portraits his childhood memories, or in the formation of Surrealism in France by the French poet, writer and theoretician Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and Guillaume Apollinaire, the French poets of the time and artists such as the German painter, print maker and sculptor Max Ernst, the Spanish artists Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, the French and Belgian painters Yves Tanguy and Rene Magritte and at the same time used in Surrealism by the French and Belgian artists Pierre Roy and Paul Dolvaux and the Polish artist Balthazar Klossowski - Balthus, specifically the influences of a great psychologists psychoanalysis ideas such a Sigmund Schlomo Freud gets used at first in Surrealism and later in Fantastic Realism in a different way. Therefore these types of influences and impacts and the view of a group of artists towards psychological aspects all together provide the reason for analysis of the creation of Fantastic Realism which is known as mysticism within a fantastical world, in this article. Also in order to clarify the reason for the creation of these works of art, the author studies the etymology of Fantastic, Realism and Figurative, after consideration of questions, history and research methods. In this relation the focus is on realism and anti-realism within painting and printmaking, and consequently on concaving the visual structure of the said artworks with attention to the unconscious mind and Automatism and at the end as conclusion, the ambiguities and questions are answered within the article.
Research methods are analytic and descriptive. Also all data collected from libraries and in some cases from authentic online sources.