Artist Arnulf Rainer is dead

The world-renowned Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer is dead. He passed away at home in Upper Austria on Thursday shortly after his 96th birthday, as confirmed by the Rainer family to the APA on Sunday afternoon. Rainer was one of the most important representatives of post-war art in Austria. His work is extensive and multifaceted. After beginnings in Surrealism and Informel, he achieved worldwide success, especially with his overpaintings.

Austria Loses Great Post-War Artist

Arnulf Rainer was born on December 8, 1929, in Baden near Vienna. Since 2009, there has been a museum dedicated to him there. From 1940 to 1944, he attended the National Political Education Institute in Traiskirchen and then the State Trade School in Villach, where he graduated in 1949. Subsequently, he was admitted to both the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts, but he left both after just a few days due to controversies with his teachers. Together with Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hollegha, and Josef Mikl, he founded the "Hundsgruppe" in 1950 and met the priest Otto Mauer in 1953. In Mauer's "Galerie nächst St. Stephan," Rainer soon had his first solo presentations and, along with Hollegha, Markus Prachensky, and Mikl, was part of the painter group "Galerie St. Stephan."

Beginning with Surrealism and Informel

At the beginning of the 1950s, after initial interest in Surrealism and Informel, Rainer turned to his characteristic overpaintings. His own and others' pictures, self-portraits, and photos came under paint, charcoal, and ballpoint pen; in 1961, he was even legally convicted in Wolfsburg for publicly overpainting an award-winning picture. Precisely because of his radical covering of often religious symbols, Rainer was controversial for years - but his work was increasingly appreciated by the church with several commissioned works and honorary doctorates from both the Catholic-Theological Faculty of the University of Münster and the Catholic-Theological Private University of Linz. Recently, there were frictions concerning 77 cross works by the artist, which are to be exhibited in Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral during Lent in 2026. Rainer had protested against this through his lawyer in November, stating that he had never created these works for religious reasons and felt co-opted by the church.

"As an artist, I am always dissatisfied. I always see the weak points when I look at my pictures. There is always an 'insufficient' there," Rainer once explained in an interview. He always refrained from interpreting his own work, but he once explained the significance of his overpaintings: "For me, it is not a negation, but I try to make something more alive. To make something that comes from history alive for the present."

From 1963, Rainer worked in various studios in Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and finally Vienna, where his first retrospective took place in 1968 at the Museum of the 20th Century. When he was to be awarded the Art Prize of the City of Vienna in 1974, he refused to participate in the award ceremony - the prize was then revoked. In 1977, he participated in documenta 6, and a year later, he represented Austria at the Venice Biennale. In 1978, he received the Grand Austrian State Prize and became a member of the Austrian Art Senate in the same year. The series of awards was crowned in 2005 when Rainer became the first non-Spanish artist to receive the Aragon-Goya Prize for his life's work. Numerous Austrian honors followed. Just this past April, he was awarded the Grand Golden Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria.

The Academy Scandal

From 1981, Rainer held a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. However, in 1994, 36 paintings stored in his academy studio were overpainted and damaged. Investigations against Rainer and his gallerist were dropped the following year. Rainer himself requested to be emeritus due to the shock. A former student emerged as the main suspect, who is said to have subsequently committed suicide. "I am not the victim, but this young person," Rainer said years later. Rainer was particularly interested in the mentally disabled and mentally ill as an art collector - in 50 years of collecting, he has amassed a remarkable collection from Art Brut and other schools.

Widely Exhibited and Honored

In international art rankings, Arnulf Rainer was repeatedly listed in the top 100, and museums around the world honored the artistic work of the painter, who today mainly lives in his adapted farmhouse in Enzenkirchen, Innviertel, with numerous solo exhibitions and retrospectives - from the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1984) to the Guggenheim in New York (1989) to the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. The exhibition "Arnulf Rainer. abgrundtiefe. perspektiefe. Retrospective 1947-1997" at the Kunsthalle Krems (1997) is considered groundbreaking. In Vienna, major solo exhibitions were seen at the Albertina (2014) or the Kunstforum (2000).

In 2009, a museum dedicated to him was opened in Baden, his birthplace, in the former women's bath. Exhibitions there highlight individual aspects of Rainer's work or relate his work to other artists. Currently, the exhibition "Arnulf Rainer & Art Brut" is on display. Next autumn, a juxtaposition of Rainer and Hermann Nitsch will follow.

ORF 2 is showing the documentary "The Overpainter Arnulf Rainer" on Sunday night in honor of the artist's passing. The film by Claudia Teissig can be seen from 11:30 PM.

(APA/Red)

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