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ARNULF RAINER* (born 1929 in Baden)

Oakleaf
etching/paper 36 x 25 cm
signed A Rainer
numbered 66/90, from the portfolio For Joseph Beuys, Munich/ New York, Edition Schellmann/ Galerie Bernd Klüser, 1987

SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE °€ 1600 - 2000
STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE °€ 1600

Arnulf Rainer is an Austrian artist. From 1940 to 1944, he attended the Napola Traiskirchen. He left school because he was forced to draw from nature. In 1947, he saw international contemporary art for the first time at a British Council exhibition in Klagenfurt (Paul Nash, Francis Bacon, Stanley Spencer, Henry Moore). From 1947 to 1949, he studied structural engineering at the Federal Trade School in Villach. Rainer was admitted to the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna, which he left after one day because of an artistic controversy with Rudolf Korunka. He left the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts because his work was described as “degenerate”. With Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hollegha, Markus Prachensky and Josef Mikl, Rainer founded the Hundsgruppe in 1950, with which he exhibited in the rooms of the Vienna Society for Science and Art in 1951. Together with Maria Lassnig he visited André Breton in Paris in 1951. In 1952, Rainer exhibited at the Kleinmayr Gallery in Klagenfurt. In March of the same year he received a solo exhibition at the Zimmergalerie Franck in Frankfurt am Main, which is now considered one of the first manifestations of Informel in Central Europe. In 1953 Rainer met the priest Otto Mauer in Vienna, who founded the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in 1954, where Rainer had his first solo exhibition in 1955. Wolfgang Hollegha, Markus Prachensky, Josef Mikl and Arnulf Rainer founded the painting group “Galerie St. Stephan” in 1956. From 1953 to 1959, Rainer began his group of reductions, a preliminary stage of his overpaintings, in an abandoned villa owned by his parents near Bad Vöslau. In 1959 he founded the “Pintorarium” with Ernst Fuchs and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. In 1961, Rainer was convicted of publicly painting over a prize-winning picture. In 1966, he received the Austrian State Prize for Graphics together with Gotthard Muhr. In 1968, Rainer's first retrospective took place at the Museum of the 20th Century in Vienna. In 1974, Rainer refused to accept the art prize of the city of Vienna. In 1977, he took part in documenta 6, and a year later he represented Austria at the Venice Biennale. In 1978, he received the Great Austrian State Prize. In 1981, he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He has been a member of the Austrian Art Senate since 1978. In 1995, he became Rainer Emeritus. For Rainer's 70th birthday, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Kunstforum in Vienna organized a retrospective. Since 2002, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich has dedicated its own room to Rainer. In 2003, Rainer received the Rhenus Art Prize for his complete work, following Georg Baselitz and Sigmar Polke. In 2004, he received an honorary doctorate from the Catholic Theological Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster, and in 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology from the Private Catholic Theological University of Linz. In 2006, he received the Aragón-Goya Prize for his life's work and his artistic relationship to Francisco de Goya. The Arnulf Rainer Museum was opened in Baden near Vienna in 2009. After initially turning to surrealism, Rainer moved towards Tachism and Informel. Since the 1950s, he has been painting over his own and other people's pictures and photos. From 1958 to 1963, Sam Francis, Georges Mathieu, Emilio Vedova, Victor Vasarely and other artists provided him with work to paint over. From the mid-1970s, he turned to gestural foot and finger painting. At the same time, numerous series of “art about art” were created: Rainer reworked photos based on Gustave Doré, Anton Maria Zanetti, Leonardo da Vinci and Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. His “Hiroshima Cycle” was shown in seventeen European cities starting in 1982. In his late work, Rainer deals with photography. Further artists and styles: Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hollegha, Josef Mikl, Maria Lassnig, Markus Prachensky, Dieter Roth, Informel, Akademie der bildenden Künste
PLEASE NOTE:
The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items.
The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.