Franz Zadrazil

Franz Zadrazil was an Austrian painter .

Zadrazil initially worked at the Austrian Post from 1961 . In 1966 he spent a year in Crete and began to work as an artist there. From 1968 he attended Rudolf Hausner 's master class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna for four years. In 1969 he created his first facade painting in Vienna . In 1971 he was a founding member of the group "Zötus" and a member of the group "Der Kreis". From 1977 he worked intensively on the technique of etching . Zadrazil remained full-time at the post office until 1979, but took six years of unpaid leave during his time there. In addition to Vienna, Paris and New York City countedto the cities he prefers to portray . Zadrazil was buried at the Döblinger Friedhof .

Zadrazil became known for his photorealistic depictions of Viennese house facades, shop portals and light rail stations . The signs of post-war decline registered by Zadrazil are captured in his pictures and also contain hidden humorous aspects. Zadrazil does not deal with famous magnificent buildings, but with the facades of buildings that are embedded in the everyday life of the population. These are often dirty, stale and imperfect, but these are precisely the qualities that interested Zadrazil in his paintings and distinguish his motifs from other cityscapes. "The content is primarily a means of transport for my painting." Despite the very realistic painting, the pictures are not true-to-detail copies, but are already subject to a process of change from the creative phase. The actual act of painting is preceded by the projection of black and white negatives onto Novopan-Plates ahead, from which the artist often takes over entire areas but also only individual points. As a result, he is more or less free with the application of paint, or consciously adds or omits details. Images of closed, morbid-looking house fronts are created, where the viewer cannot see behind the facade. The pictures also lack the representation of living people, since these only appear as pictorial existences on advertising posters. The viewer is thus forced into the role of a "storyteller" who has to create his own associations based on the composition of the image. 

In the years 1975 to 1978 Peter Dressler and Franz Zadrazil made the black and white film Sonderfahrt ; the result was an audiovisual mosaic as a mixture of what was found and what was played associatively.  He was buried at the Döblinger Friedhof .