Arnulf Rainer
His commitment to the search for new pictorial approaches, accompanied by his performative work and extensive written documentation, enshrined Arnulf Rainer as one of the most influential artists of his generation. Always exalting the body language implied by painting, the artist emphasised the earliest forms of human expression and, in the 1970s, began to photograph himself, creating a link between the theatrical and the graphic as a means of expression.
Close to Viennese Actionism and exploring gesture through performance, he expanded his practice to video and started painting with his hands, a method that accompanied him throughout his career.
Primarily interested in automatism and in the desire to disrupt conventional communication in order to recover the richness of human expression, Rainer based his expressiveness on the concealment of images by other artists as well as of his own self-portraits, reaching abstraction and an almost total obscuration of form. In this sense, his body of work consistently sought to free itself from its own limitations, even exceeding, through the very shape of the canvases, conventional standards.
In 1978 he represented Austria at the Venice Biennale and received the Grand Austrian State Prize. From 1981 he was a member of the Academies of Fine Arts in Berlin and Vienna. In that same year he received the Max Beckmann Prize in Frankfurt, and in 1989 he was awarded the International Photography Prize in New York.
Among the museums that dedicated retrospectives to him are the Albertina Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Kunsthalle Bern, and the Kunstverein Hamburg.
In 2009 the Arnulf Museum opened in Baden, Austria.
Arnulf Rainer – Portfolio 2025
Arnulf Rainer
Landschaft
1991-92
Pastel and oil on paper on wood
73 x 102 cm
Exhibition: 2026 – ARCOMadrid 2026. NF/NIEVES FERNANDEZ
Arnulf Rainer
Blumenserie
ca. 2000
Mixed media on paper on wood
44 x 31,5 cm
Exhibition: 2024 – Arnulf Rainer. Rot, Blau, Gelb. NF/NIEVES FERNANDEZ, Madrid.
Arnulf Rainer
P29. (‘Face Farces’ series)
1970-75
Pencil on photograph
18 x 24 cm
Exhibition: 2020 – Arnulf Rainer. Visages. NF/NIEVES FERNANDEZ, Madrid.
Arnulf Rainer
Untitled
1993
Pastel, oil on paper and cardboard on wood
63 x 84 cm
Exhibition: 2016- Arnulf Rainer. Farbenfest. NF/NIEVES FERNANDEZ, Madrid.
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