The Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow (ACF Moscow) sees itself as a cooperation partner and contact point for Austrian artists, cultural institutions and scientists for the initiation, planning and implementation of Austro-Russian cultural and scientific projects.

What is it that makes authors world authors? What are the ideas and stories that fascinate people all over the world? How do they change across borders?

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) is still one of the most widely read German-speaking authors today. Thomas Mann wrote about his world-famous fellow-writer: “His literary fame extended to the far corners of the globe.” Zweig’s enduring appeal is demonstrated by the many historical and contemporary film adaptations, reworkings and translations of his texts, from Europe to China.

This phenomenon is the subject of the new special exhibition at the Literature Museum of the Austrian National Library. It shows Zweig as a not uncontroversial best-selling author and as a citizen of the world, undertaking extensive journeys across Europe to America, Russia and India, and living in exile in Brazil after being expelled by the Nazis. Using original manuscripts, letters, photographs, film clips and sound recordings, the show takes us around the globe (“Magellan”), to Indonesia (“Amok”) and Brazil (“Brazil: Land of the Future”), as well as into the “World of Yesterday” of the lost Habsburg Empire, which Zweig saw as a global model for the coexistence of different peoples. As a pioneering thinker of Europe, he strove for a literature that transcends the borders of individual nations.

The exhibition has been created in collaboration with the Stefan Zweig Centre Salzburg and the Literature Archive Salzburg.

Video of the exhibition was made by Cultural section of the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in cooperation with the Literature Museum of the Austrian National Library:

Stefan Zweig - Weltautor

Video of the exhibition in cooperation with the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs

Stefan Zweig. World Author (Video of the exhibition in the Literature Museum of the Austrian National Library)

The Moscow International Biennale for Young Art is one of the largest projects on the Russian contemporary art scene held since 2008. From July to September 2022 Moscow will host its 8th edition. The Main Project will take place at the building of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art located at 25 Petrovka Street. 

Applications to take part in the Main Project of the 8th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, which is to be held in August-September 2022, can be submitted through 18 January 2022 at the biennale’s website youngart.ru.

Any curator under 35 years, whose project includes works by artists and art groups belonging to the same age category, can apply for the open call. Applications from the groups of curators are also accepted; collective and individual applications are considered equal. Questions regarding the application process can be sent to info@youngart.ru.

Results of the open call will be announced on 25 February 2022. 

Open call for curators to take part in the Main Project of the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art

The exhibition Xenia Hausner: True Lies will open on 28 September at the Gallery of 19th and 20th Century European and American Art at The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Visitors will get to see a total of 30 paintings by Xenia Hausner and a series of photographs made by the artist in preparation for her painted works.

Xenia Hausner was born into an artist’s family in 1950, studied stage design in Vienna and London, and began creating set designs for plays and operas in 1977, working with the most prestigious venues in the world from the Royal Opera House Covent Garden to the Salzburg Festival.

In 1992, the artist decided to devote herself exclusively to painting. This was motivated by her desire to gain more freedom and become the ‘director of her own painterly productions’. The theatrical and, more generally, narrative dimension of Hausner’s work shows her to be the inheritor of a centuries-long tradition of Western European painting. At the same time, her art is targeted at the present day, depicting contemporary character types and treating current societal problems. Her dramatic, colourful and emotionally charged works leave no one indifferent, convincingly showing that the potential of figurative painting is far from exhausted today.

In most of Hausner’s paintings, the action takes place in a theatrical setting with meticulous staging, arranged lighting, and decorative backdrops, where models play out roles in mysterious and ambiguous mise-en-scènes. The very title of the exhibition points to the importance of theatrical principles in the artist’s work: the arranged, the invented and the fictitious turn out to have a truthful inner content that evokes the viewer’s immediate reaction.

In Xenia Hausner’s work, everything is designed to intensify the viewer’s experience – a task previously pursued by several generations of 20th-century painters. The artist attains this goal thanks to her vivid palette, sweeping brushstrokes, ornamental motifs and decorative designs, which are further enhanced by large formats and powerful and monumental figures that place her work in the tradition of altarpieces, historical paintings and state portraits.

One of Xenia Hausner’s key themes is the role of women in life and art. The action of her paintings takes place in a certain alternate reality dominated by women, who play the main role in the artist’s settings. Far from imposing themselves, the rare male characters blend organically into the ‘female world’ of her paintings.

‘My universe is female. Women are a pivotal element in my work. In my pictures they act as representatives of all genders. I process the human themes with a female cast.’ Xenia Hausner

Hausner’s paintings are capable of generating ever new meanings in the individual viewing experience. The artist also expands the associative field through her use of titles from both well-known and relatively obscure films and books, which provide additional food for thought for viewers in the know. More often than not, the plots and characters of these works bear little relation to what is taking place in the artist’s paintings. Hausner makes use of the method of free association when choosing her titles that are, first and foremost, poetic metaphors. In addition, she often refers to both individual works by other artists and general styles of painting. In any case, reading a specific reference does not provide the viewer with an instant solution but only helps him or her to find one of many possible vectors of interpretation.

‘I don’t offer an instruction manual or reading guide. On the contrary. Unambiguous interpretations are boring. Life is a question mark. Art has to be mysterious, nonconformist, and irrational.’ Xenia Hausner

The desire to find a connection with the viewer, to be open to him or her, is the most important aspect of Xenia Hausner's work. At the same time, the ambivalence of many of the scenes staged by the artist makes the viewer take an active stance with regard to her paintings and compare them with his or her own life experiences, fears and desires.

Hausner’s art has a profound impact at both visual and emotional levels: the viewer is caught up in the drama of an intense and, at the same time, highly intimate and profound contact between human beings. The artist has a special gift for bringing across subtly orchestrated emotional links between the main characters of her paintings, whose main themes are human relations and manifestations of care, affection and love. This explains the profound importance of her work for today’s world marked by an unending pandemic, continuing local and global conflicts, and the appearance of ever new waves of refugees.

Curators: Daniel Bulatov and Elsy Lahner (Vienna)

Xenia Hausner’s retrospective is held in cooperation with The Albertina Museum Vienna and with the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport as well as of the Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow and Austrian Embassy in Russia.

The exhibition of the Austrian painter and stage designer Xenia Hausner "True lies", which was earlier presented in the Albertina museem, will be shown in the State Museum of Fine Arts A. S. Pushkin. Around the exhibition are planned different educational events.

Exhibition of Xenia Hausner in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Cobario - Weihnachtskonzert

Cobario Christmas Concert

The starting point in the formation of the concert program of the modern music ensemble Klangforum Wien (Austria) was the reflection on the theme of musical geometry in the music of the XX and XXI centuries, namely the interaction of layers and lines, horizontal and vertical thinking, which plays a fundamental role in Austro-German musical culture. The powerful polyphonic tradition ("games of pure mind"), coming directly from J.S. Bach and then reaching a new stage in the discoveries of the Second Viennese School (German: Neue Wiener Schule), finds its development both in the works of representatives of the post-war avant-garde and in the works of contemporary composers. As a free musical fantasy on this theme, the ensemble presents a program of works by A. Webern, K. Stockhausen, D. Ligeti, B. Furrer and K. Lang.

Counterpoint geometry. December evenings of Svyatoslav Richter with Klangforum Wien

The Russian-Austrian public forum "Sochi Dialogue" in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow are hosting a series of discussions based on the topic of “Theatre dialogues between Austria and Russia”. Prominent cultural workers and representatives in the field of theatre from both countries are invited to participate in order to create a dialogue about recent topics within the theatre world and to exchange opinions and experience. The series of discussions will kick-off with the round table on the topic “Theatre Work during the COVID-19 pandemic: Difficulties and Challenges. Conclusions that have been drawn from this period of work”

moderator: Fabian Ortner, director of ACF Mocsow, cultural attaché of the Austrian embassy Moscow

Ambassador Dr. Margot Klestil- Löffler, special representative of the Federal Minister for European and International Affairs for the Russian Federation in the context of the Sochi Dialogue

Andrej Fursenko, Assistant to the President of the Russian Federation

Dmitrij Ljubinskij, Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Austria 

Dr. Werner Almhofer, Ambassador of the Republic Austria in Russia 

Valery Fokin, artistic director of the Alexandrinski-Theater, Saint Petersburg

Vladimir Urin, general director of the Bolschoj theater Moscow 

Roland Geyer, director at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna

Kay Voges, director of the Volkstheater Vienna

Dmitry Bertman, artistic director of the Helikon-Oper, Moscow

Alexandra Althoff, deputy artistic director of the Burgtheater Vienna

Russian-Austrian public forum "Sochi Dialogue" 
 Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow

Theaterdialoge zwischen Österreich und Russland

Theatre dialogues between Austria and Russia

The Volkstheater in Vienna is performing the play "Drei Schwestern" in Moscow as part of the New European Theater Festival (NET). The director Susanne Kennedy interprets the well-known play by Anton Chekhov in a radical new way.

The project is supported by: As part of the German Year in Russia 2020/2021 with the support of Goethe-Institut

With support from the Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow

Three Sisters

The “Flora” project in the St. Petersburg Hermitage is known in Austria under the title “Ganymed”, which is shown in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna. The director Jacqueline Kornmüller and the producer and playwright Peter Wolf have invited outstanding writers and musicians from Austria, Russia, Germany, Great Britain, the USA, Belarus and other countries to write texts and compositions for art pieces in the Hermitage. A team of 14 actors and dancers created performances that show a new interpretation of famous paintings. By involving the audience in their piece, the artists invite the audience to have a new artistic experience in a classical museum.

Austrian Ministry of Arts and Culture, Civil Service and Sport

FLORA Performing Arts meet fine art heritage. Take a fresh look at the Old Masters!

The Festival "Austrian Film      Festival" is traditionally shown in Moscow and the regions. Due to the Covid-19      pandemic, this year’s Festival could only be presented in Moscow. The Austrian Film Festival starts with the world premiere of the adaptation of the classic novel by Stefan Zweig ROYAL GAME (Schachnovelle). The festival program includes different formats and genres: drama FOX IN A HOLE (Fuchs im Bau), vaudeville about health and marriage RISKS AND SIDE EFFECTS (Risiken und Nebenwirkungen), hooligan cartoon SNOTTY BOY (Rotzbub), documentary portrait of designer Bruce MAU. All films are shown in the original language with Russian subtitles.

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Moskino Cinema

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