464 - Arnulf Rainer* (Baden 1929 - 2025 Vienna)

Arnulf Rainer* (Baden 1929 - 2025 Vienna) Untitled, 1971-73 from the series "Sieben Kleine", 1971-73 etching/paper 19,5 x 17,6 cm signed A. Rainer, inscribed pr. Druck signed in the plate A. Rainer SCHÄTZPREIS / ESTIMATE € 400 - 800 STARTPREIS / STARTING PRICE € 400 Arnulf Rainer was a key Austrian artist of the post-war modernist era. After attending the Napola Traiskirchen and studying structural engineering at the Federal Technical School in Villach, he was briefly admitted to both the University of Applied Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, though he quickly left both institutions. In 1947, he encountered international contemporary art for the first time at a British Council exhibition in Klagenfurt. In 1950, Rainer founded the "Hundsgruppe" together with Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehmden, Arik Brauer, Wolfgang Hollegha, Markus Prachensky, and Josef Mikl. While Fuchs, Lehmden, and Brauer are associated with Fantastic Realism, Hollegha, Mikl, Prachensky, and Rainer developed significant positions within Austrian Informel art. Following a joint visit to André Breton in Paris in 1951, Rainer increasingly turned away from Surrealism toward Tachism and Informel. Otto Mauer supported him from 1953 onwards; in 1956, Rainer founded the "Galerie St. Stephan" group with Hollegha, Prachensky, and Mikl. The "Reductions" (Reduktionen)—a precursor to his later overpaintings—were created between 1953 and 1959. From the 1950s onwards, Rainer reworked images, prints, and photographs—both his own and those by other artists. Artists such as Sam Francis, Georges Mathieu, Emilio Vedova, and Jackson Pollock serve as important points of comparison for his gestural, process-oriented painting. From the mid-1970s, he produced series of works including Face Farces, Body Poses, Blindmalerei (Blind Painting), Mikrostrukturen (Microstructures), Atomisationen (Atomizations), and Kreuzserien (Cross Series). His body-oriented pictorial strategies relate to the Viennese Actionism of Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, although Rainer was not himself an Actionist. He received the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1978 and taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1981 to 1995. The Arnulf Rainer Museum in Baden near Vienna opened in 2009. 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 and platform fee. 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, the buyer's premium and platform fee. 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.