Fritz Janschka's Homages to the Masters (and Mistresses)

These are portraits of 44 artists that Fritz Janschka has admired over a lifetime of painting. Janschka is one of six founders of the art movement started in Vienna in 1946 known as the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. At the very beginning of his career, he painted a self-portrait in which Dürer, Holbein and Rembrandt are playing a board game on his head, vying for his artistic allegiances. In this new series of artists’ portraits, which he began at the end of his ninth decade, he wanted to pay homage to those predecessors who have fed his imagination and taught him their techniques. Some he heard whispering in the back of his mind to “try these colors” or “see what you can do with this idea.” After painting a Paul Klee watercolor, he wanted to test his skill on one of the older masters, so he next tried Hieronymus Bosch. This led to a series of forty-nine portraits of six centuries of his beloved old masters (and mistresses). These works were painted between 2010 and 2012...the year Fritz turned 93.