Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer 1929 Baden near Vienna - lives and works in Enzenkirchen and on Tenerife The Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer was born in Baden near Vienna in 1929. After studying structural engineering for two years at the Bundesgewerbeschule in Villach, Arnulf Rainer went to Vienna in 1949 and applied to the Academy of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts. He was accepted at both academies, but left the art school again after only a few days and worked from then on as an autodidact. Arnulf Rainer very quickly gained fame as a freelance painter and today, in retrospect, is considered one of the most important artists of the Austrian avant-garde after 1945. "Painting to leave painting" The early works are surreal figurative drawings. In 1950 Arnulf Rainer founded the "Dog Group" with Ernst Fuchs, Maria Lassnig, Arik Brauer, Anton Lehmden and others, but he exhibited with them only once in 1951. With the artist Maria Lassnig Arnulf Rainer travels to Paris in the summer of 1951, where they meet André Breton, through which Arnulf Rainer feels even more strengthened in his incipient rejection of figuration. In the same year Arnulf Rainer and Maria Lassnig stage the exhibition "Unfigurative Painting" at the Künstlerhaus Klagenfurt. In 1952, the Zimmergalerie Franck in Frankfurt am Main shows works by Arnulf Rainer; in the accompanying catalog, Rainer publishes his texts "Painting to Leave Painting" and "The One Against the Other." This solo exhibition is considered one of the first manifestations of informal painting. Groundbreaking impulses for avant-garde art in Austria In 1953 Arnulf Rainer met Otto Maurer in Vienna, who opened the groundbreaking Galerie nächst St. Stephan the following year and with his exhibition activities significantly promoted the avant-garde in Austria. Arnulf Rainer, who exhibited here for the first time in 1955, also became one of the most important initiators with his art. In 1956, the "Galerie St. Stephan" group of painters formed there with Arnulf Rainer, Wolfgang Hollegha, Markus Prachensky, Josef Mikl and others. Destruction through overpainting for a new beginning From the mid-1950s, Arnulf Rainer's first black paintings, the "overpaintings," "zumalungen," "remnants" emerge alongside the "proportions" and "blind drawings." Arnulf Rainer formulates for his art the immersion in the sense of the Surrealists in the unconscious, to achieve a state of dissolution that ends in a tabula rasa. Only in this way is a new beginning for painting in the second half of the 20th century possible for him. Rainer paints over his own works as well as those of other artists and other models. He begins to experiment with different forms of his picture supports. From 1954 Arnulf Rainer includes the cross shape, whose strict and at the same time symbolic form in connection with the expressive, gestural treatment also plays an important role in the following years. From the end of the 1960s the first photographic self-portraits and overpaintings of automaton photos were created, later the work groups of "Face Farces" and "Body Language". Internationally important exhibitions and honors In 1968 the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna showed the first retrospective of Arnulf Rainer's art. In 1972, 1977 and 1982 Arnulf Rainer participated in the Documenta in Kassel and in 1978 and 1980 in the Venice Biennale. From 1981 to 1995 he held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 1989 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York showed the first comprehensive retrospective outside Europe. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of his birth, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kunstforum Wien also show a large retrospective. In 2009, the Arnulf Rainer Museum opens in his birthplace of Baden near Vienna. In 2019, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich dedicates a special room to the artist on the occasion of his 90th birthday, where works by Arnulf Rainer from the extensive holdings of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen can now be seen permanently, with over 40 paintings from all creative phases. Arnulf Rainer lives and works in Enzenkirchen and in the winter months on Tenerife.