«Ich bin der Anschauung nach Surrealist und alles, was ich schreibe, ist surrealistisch»: le incursioni di Wolfgang Hildesheimer nella critica d’arte

The essay tries to analyze the Wolfgang Hildesheimer’s meddling in the field of art criticism. His capability, in his literary biography Marbot (1981) and already in his novel Paradies des falschen Vögel (1953), of mixing and quoting art sources in a mystifying way has subverted every traditional stylistic and historiographical investigation. The aim of the author was to criticize the long-established system raised in the first half of the 19th century. His meeting with the surrealistic movement in Great Britain at the edge of the Second World War, however, was crucial for his literary and artistic research in the field of art criticism.