(Vienna 1914–1995)
“Zwei Kontinente”, signed and dated R. Hausner 61, titled “2 Kontinente” on the reverse, tempera, resin oil on canvas on Novopan panel, 60 x 299 cm, framed

Illustrated and registered in:
Hans Holländer, Rudolf Hausner. Werkmonographie. Volker Huber, 1985,
page 259, cat. rais. no. 36 (there dated 1962) and colour ill. on page 126,
page 127 detail (in colour), pages 128–130 full-page details in colour, pages
245–246 - Rudolf Hausner’s interpretation of the work “Zwei Kontinente”
from 1970 with ill.
Wieland Schmied. Rudolf Hausner, Werner Hofmann (editor), Verlag Galerie Welz, 1970, cat. rais. page 146, no. 26 (with ill.), full-page colour ill. plates 33, 34, details, plates 35, 36, pages 33, 34 text by Wieland Schmied: Ein Hauptwerk Rudolf Hausners ist sein Bild “Zwei Kontinente”...

Published in:
Karl Maria Grimme: In der Zone des “Phantastischen” Europa, 7, Europa-Verlag, Bad Reichenhall 1963
Günther Pfeiffer “Wiener Schule” Kunst, 4/5, Verlag Trost, Mainz 1965
Rudolf Hausner Mizue, art magazine, 769, Tokyo 1969
Friedhelm Häring. Labyrinth und Billard, Walltor-Verlag, Gießen 1991,
page 24, ill. 7

Exhibited:
Surrealismus - phantastische Malerei der Gegenwart, Künstlerhaus Vienna 1962
Salon de Mai, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris, 1963, Alfred Kubin ed i Pittori fantastici Viennesi, Galleria Il Bilico, Rome 1963
Die Wiener Schule, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, 1965
subsequently –
Städtisches Musem, Schloß Morsbroich, Leverkusen
Kuratorium, Kulturelles Frankfurt und Kulturamt Frankfurt a. M.
Kunstverein Pforzheim, Reuchlinhaus
Berliner Festwochen, Senat und Kunstamt
Berlin-Charlottenburg, Rathaus
Kunstverein Kassel
Zentralsparkasse der Gemeinde Wien
Rudolf Hausner, Künstlerhaus Vienna, 1980, cat. no. 22, two-page colour ill.
Rudolf Hausner, The Tokyo Shimbun, 1982, full-page colour ill. in the catalogue

“I began to paint a landscape. The longer I worked on it, the more clearly two completely different areas developed. One is enclosed by a wall, the other is limitless...”
Rudolf Hausner 1970

The city in which Hausner grew up, wearing the sailor suit seen in his pictures, is, needless to say, one of his constantly recurring motifs. The choice, however, is as limited as it is distinctive. It is not the city with its everyday street scenes that is depicted, nor any scenes of the Danube, or the city centre with its Plague Column and St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Vienna is depicted in a different way, namely through the presence of its characteristic places. A park is always present, a structured, geometric French garden, a square formed of straight rows of trees separated from its surroundings. Beginning with his painting „Ark of Odysseus“, this park then reappears in many images as a trapezoid, sloping upwards, manifesting as Schönbrunn Palace or the Belvedere or as one of the many smaller geometrically structured enclaves found among the sea of houses within the city. These images form the backdrops to Sunday afternoon walks, designed to match the sailor suit ...
The varied designs of parks and gardens, however, remain the early experience of an oppressive landscape and geometric limitations, green and overgrown yet completely regulated. In the picture entitled “Zwei Kontinente”, the other continent stands in opposition to this, it is wider and larger. The layout of the park only protrudes into it. Included there is the portrait of the boy, his background is of blue sky and his sailor suit is white. As if from another world, he looks out of his frame, belonging to a structure that is not yet his own. Many tiny figures move ant-like, individually or in groups, on the geometrically arranged surfaces. Most of them are strollers who “populate” the park, others form crowds, gathering together. A podium is set up under a parasol and in marching formation, a demonstration with a banner pulls out of the picture in the lower right corner. What the crowd is demonstrating for (or against) is no longer discernible from a distance. The behaviour of crowds, of individuals and masses, is characteristically captured in a bird’s eye view. ...
The other larger continent is fairy-tale like, free and wide, a mountainous desert with strange plants. The butterfly tree, a chimeric plant, is colourful and iridescent. This element, which became a regularly recurring motif, appears here for the first time. It is the embodiment of dangerous beauty and a dream-like image from a completely different world in which the normal, everyday rules have no meaning. The butterfly is also a large Mirabilis jalapa flower and has become the size and shape of a tree, whose trunk is made up of many segments reminiscent of the shape of female breasts. The chimerical plant is accompanied by a tree sized, umbrella shaped mushroom and a white shimmering, transparent plant standing behind the rugged mountain range. It is a huge dandelion clock, the seed stage of the dandelion, a sight familiar to every child. Here the opposing worlds are close together, reality and utopia, two worlds that exclude one another.
From the mentioned monograph by Hans Holländer