Exhibition opening: Fischer von Erlach

Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656-1723) is one of the most important master builders of the European Baroque. With buildings such as the collegiate church in Salzburg, the court library and the Karlskirche in Vienna, he created icons of architectural history. Trained in Rome, Fischer combined in his work a precise knowledge of ancient monuments and the most contemporary buildings of Italy as well as France with a special ability for spatial-sculptural and at the same time pictorial design. His spatial and temporal horizons extended far beyond the boundaries of his narrower sphere of influence - primarily Vienna and Salzburg. As the visionary author of the first illustrated world history of architecture, which spread his fame throughout Europe in book form even during his lifetime, he became a world architect of the Baroque.
The Salzburg Museum, in collaboration with the Wien Museum, is using the 300th anniversary of Fischer's death in 2023 as an opportunity to present the architect's fascinatingly diverse oeuvre, his artistic environment and his charisma in a large-scale show. The exhibits are drawn from the rich holdings of the two partner museums, supplemented by numerous high-caliber loans from Austrian and international collections. Austrian artist Werner Feiersinger stages this show, presenting Fischer's architecture from the perspective of a sculptor. Drawings, engravings, paintings, models and photographs made by Feiersinger himself make Fischer's most important buildings and projects vivid and convey the topicality of his artistic thinking between body, space and image. A natural focus of the exhibition is on the Salzburg buildings with which he shaped the face of the city like no other architect. 
In its contemporary design, in the arrangement of the objects and with innovative forms of mediation, the exhibition deliberately refers to the great Fischer von Erlach retrospective of 1956 and thus reflects the history of exhibiting as well as the historical construction of the "Fischer von Erlach myth".