Painter, singer, and songwriter Arik Brauer is renowned for his Surrealist paintings inspired by Jewish mystical traditions and dream imagery. With painters Wolfgang Hutter, Ernst Fuchs, Rudolf Hausner, and Anton Lehmden, Brauer was a founding member of the Wiener Schule des Phantastischen Realismus (“Vienna School of Fantastic Realism”)—an artistic movement blending the techniques of Old Master paintings with religious and esoteric symbolism to create magical new worlds.

Brauer’s paintings are heavily influenced by his childhood in Vienna under the Nazi regime and the subsequent rise of National Socialism, as well as by religious texts such as the Torah, the Haggadah, and the Old Testament. For Brauer, “Fantastic Realism” involved implicating the viewer in surreal and authentic scenes. Paintings such as My Father in Winter (1983), which depicts Brauer’s father walking through a snowy expanse wrapped in blue cloak that undulates in oceanic waves with a yellow flower-like Star of David radiating golden light from his chest, reflect his embrace of traditional landscape painting, Jewish history, and mysticism.

Brauer’s work from the 1980s encompassed murals, mosaics, and painted tiles. In addition, he was known as an accomplished poet, dancer, songwriter, and singer associated with Austropop–a term from the late 1960s and 70s for performers that sang in Austrian dialect and incorporated political or social commentary in lyrics.

For Luna Luna, Brauer envisioned a fantastical carousel straight out of one of his mystical dreams. The carousel was designed so that eight different characters from a fairytale doubled as seats—among them a butterfly, a wolf, a mermaid, and an anthropomorphic hand—accompanied by a song written, produced, and performed by Brauer’s daughter, Timna Brauer.