Xenia Hausner: You & I

Xenia Hausner: Lucky Break Rainer Metzger and Katharina Sykora

A new book on Xenia Hausner, the artist who is a leading figure in Vienna’s hugely influential realist movement.

Hausner’s use of bold color and dramatic lighting—the product of her career as a set designer—offer as much insight into the emotional state of the artist as they reveal about the people she depicts. Lucky Break approaches Hauser’s work through the context of her creative process. Designed by Hausner herself, the book’s broad, horizontal format incorporates photographs, sketches, and notes—assembled like collages—to enhance brilliant reproductions of her pieces. Accompanying the illustrations are essays discussing the influence of Hausner’s work in the theater and on her art, focusing on her search for motifs.

Rainer Metzger is an art historian and teacher, who lectures on art history at the University of Stuttgart.

Katharina Sykora is professor of nineteenth and twentieth-century art history in Brunswick, Germany, and has published widely on new media.