575 - Arnulf Rainer (1929 Baden near Vienna – Vienna 2025)

Arnulf Rainer (1929 Baden near Vienna – Vienna 2025) FINGER PAINTING (Yellow/Green/Black) Oil on Schoellershammer cardboard, mounted on wood. (Early 1980s). Approx. 73 x 103 cm. Signed lower left, monogrammed upper left and lower right. • A characteristic work from Rainer’s significant hand- and finger-painting series of the early 1980s • Ecstatic painterly gestures and vibrant color contrasts convey an immediate, physical expressiveness • Hands and fingers as direct painting tools in a radically free visual language The hand- and finger-paintings mark a decisive expansion of Arnulf Rainer’s artistic expressive possibilities. Since the early 1970s, the artist has increasingly dispensed with the brush, using his hands, fingers, and sometimes his entire body as direct painting instruments. Wiping, striking, and smudging become spontaneous, physically driven gestures that make the painting process itself visible. This work, created in the early 1980s, demonstrates the full expressive power of this technique. Broad, jet-black swaths of color run through the composition, overlapping and meeting vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow. While the dark, impasto-like traces of paint lend the painting a powerful structure, delicate, nervous lines and sweeping smudges unfold in between. The interplay of condensation and dissolution, controlled movement and impulsive gesture gives rise to a tension-filled, almost ecstatic composition. The cross-like interweaving of the black swaths of color also echoes a motif that has accompanied Rainer’s work since its beginnings. As early as documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, Rainer’s gestural, increasingly color-intensive works attracted considerable attention. This finger painting belongs to this important creative phase, during which his painting evolved from concentrated overpainting to a new, physically driven freedom of expression. Exhibition: Dance. Movement, Gesture. Image, Kunsthalle Göppingen 2019, color ill. p. 162. Provenance: Formerly Galerie Ruberl, Vienna; Private collection, Austria. Taxation: subject to regular taxation (VAT: Regular Taxation).