My friend Wolfgang Fischer, who has died aged 87, was born in Vienna and carried that city with him to London, where he spent 32 years as an art historian, art dealer and writer, running Fischer Fine Art gallery until returning permanently to Austria on retirement in 1995.
He opened the gallery – co-founded with his father, Harry – in 1972 with a selection of important works by 19th- and 20th-century artists. Later exhibitions introduced classical Austrian modernists including Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. Wolfgang’s beautifully illustrated monograph, Egon Schiele, published in 1994 and translated into many languages, contributed to that artist’s international reputation. His taste and scholarship made Fischer Fine Art one of the most respected galleries in London.
Wolfgang was the son of Heinrich Fischer, aka Harry, a bookseller and publisher, and Martha (nee Hölzl), daughter of a social democrat member of parliament. He spent the second world war in Vienna, attending the Hernalser Gymnasium school before reading art history and archaeology at the University of Vienna, graduating as a doctor of philosophy in 1961. His father – Catholic but with Jewish forebears – had fled to Britain on the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938, and settled there after the war following service with the British army’s Pioneer Corps. In 1946 Harry co-founded Marlborough Fine Art.
In 1960 Wolfgang had met Jutta Tempfer at university. They were married in 1961 and after two years living in the US, where he taught at Harvard and Smith College, Massachusetts, they moved to Britain, raising a family in Little Venice in west London. Initially Wolfgang worked in his father’s gallery, before setting up Fischer Fine Art and running it from 1972 to 1995.
In 1981 Wolfgang received the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. He was president of Austrian PEN from 1998 to 2001, and the organisation is planning an updated edition of his autobiographical novel trilogy, Wohnungen (1969), published in English as Interiors (1971). He co-founded the committee that planned a memorial, unveiled in 2008, at the University of Vienna for marginalised, emigrated and murdered art historians. He hoped that his large library of books on Judaica and Vienna’s socialist era would be donated to the city.
Wolfgang loved fun and he loved life. He and the Fischer family were generous hosts, with lively evenings often ending with whiskey and cigars. Wolfgang delighted in elaborate games, but like a wise child knew that they had a serious side. He became a clown, with his make-up registered at the Grimaldi museum; he also choreographed a ballet, wrote poems and, aware of his distinctive glasses, amassed a huge collection of owl trinkets.
His daughter Flora and son Toby both died in 2016. He is survived by Jutta, their daughter Bettina and three grandchildren.
