The Surrealism Website
Otto Rapp (1944-)


Born in 1944 in Felixdorf, Lower Austria, I lived and was educated in Vienna, where later I worked as a clerk in the Transport and Insurance Business. After completing service in the Austrian Air Force, I traveled throughout Europe, eventually settling in Stockholm, Sweden. As a Painter I was initially self taught, studying in the various Galleries and Museums. In Vienna, I was often ‘hanging out’ at the Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste, where I admired the work of the Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus represented there by the Professors Rudolf Hausner and Arik Brauer. Other members were Ernst Fuchs, Wolfgang Hutter and Anton Lehmden, who had studied together at the Academy under Prof. Albert Paris Gütersloh. In Stockholm, I found out that I was washing dishes in the very same Restaurant where years earlier another Viennese Artist, Fritz Hundertwasser , the ‘Austrian Gaudi’ as he was later known as, had worked the same job. Encouraged by an art dealer in Gamla Stan, I began to paint more seriously. Busking on the streets of Gamla Stan with a Dutch artist, my very first painting was sold to a passer-by by my artist friend while I stood in the employment office line - this paid for a lavish meal for both of us that day. Traveling around in 1968, I wound up in Western Canada where eventually I settled in Lethbridge, Alberta. It was in Canada where the majority of my mature work was produced (under the sponsorship of a small Lethbridge Gallery). Working for the Canadian Pacific Railway, I quit in 1977 to attend the Bachelor of Fine Arts Program at the University of Lethbridge, graduating (with great distinction) in 1982. In Canada, I participated in many exhibitions, and held several Solo Shows, culminating in the pivotal 1994 showing at The Prairie Art Gallery in Grande Prairie, Alberta, which earned me the moniker The Mystic . Throughout my years in Canada, I had been the subject of many reviews and newspaper articles as well as local television shows in Calgary and Lethbridge while being active as an Artist, Art Instructor, Curator, Studio Technician, Art Critic and Juror. In early summer of 2011 I returned to live in Vienna, Austria and began working in a studio at the Palais Palffy, which also houses the Phantasten Museum Wien as well as the Vienna Academy of Visionary Art.and Prof. Ernst Fuchs had until recently a studio (we were 'Neighbors' then). Since January 2015 my new studio in Vienna is at the KunstQuartierWien, Aichholzgasse 32-34 in Wien-Meidling.