In autumn 2015 the Bank Austria Kunstforum is presenting an in-depth view of the graphic, creative and entrepreneurial universe of the German inventor of Fix & Foxi Rolf Kauka (1917-2000). Fix & Foxi is still the only comic anywhere in the world that has managed to become a household word in everyday speech (“Ich bin Fix & Foxi!”: the German for “I’m shattered, exhausted” is “ich bin fix und fertig”, hence “Ich bin Fix & Foxi!”). Kauka has always kept to an entirely different narrative and graphic tradition to Walt Disney and, after the model of Wilhelm Busch, started in the 1950s to establish a European comic culture in the German-speaking regions. He rapidly expanded with great success in Scandinavia, Southern Europe and Latin America. Besides the well-known characters from the Fix & Foxi family with Lupo, Knox and Oma (Granny) Eusebia, quintessential Franco-Belgian comic classics like Lucky Luke and the Smurfs cropped up first of all in Kauka’s publications. For the first time in Austria the exhibition presents the original drawings by the Fix & Foxy editorial staff and assigns to them the names of the leading artists from Kauka’s production studios. Documents and historic material cast light on the history, origins and development of the publishing house, providing the opportunity for a background analysis of the comic as a genre, with special focus on the two “little rascals in fox fur” from their beginnings to their contemporary status as comic cult characters on television.

Curator: Gottfried Gusenbauer

In cooperation with the Karikaturmuseum Krems