Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf RAINER was born on Decem­ber 8, 1929 in Baden near Vien­na. From 1947 to 1949, he stud­ied at the State Trade School in Vil­lach. Sub­se­quent­ly, he was a stu­dent for a short time at the Acad­e­my of Applied Arts and at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na. Ini­tial­ly inspired by the style of Fan­tas­tic or Abstract Real­ism, Rain­er ear­ly devel­oped his own artis­tic expres­sion. Togeth­er with Ernst Fuchs, Anton Lehm­den, Arik Brauer, Wolf­gang Hol­legha and Josef Mikl he found­ed the artists’ asso­ci­a­tion “Hunds­gruppe”. In 1951, he turned away from fan­ta­sy and began his blind paint­ings. At the same time, he cre­at­ed his first over­paint­ings, to which he devot­ed him­self inten­sive­ly until the mid-1960s. Togeth­er with Josef Mikl, Wolf­gang Hol­legha and Markus Prachen­sky, Arnulf Rain­er became a mem­ber of the “Painters’ Group of the Galerie St. Stephan” in 1956. Togeth­er with Ernst Fuchs and Frieden­sre­ich Hun­dert­wass­er, he found­ed the artists’ group “Pina­to­ri­um” in 1959, which remained in exis­tence until 1968. From the mid-1960s, he began his exper­i­ments under drug intox­i­ca­tion and engaged in paint­ing the men­tal­ly ill. Rain­er’s gri­mace pho­tos with and with­out over­paint­ing were also cre­at­ed dur­ing this time. Sub­se­quent­ly, he expand­ed his artis­tic work through the media of video and film. In 1971, the Kun­stvere­in Ham­burg ded­i­cat­ed the first major ret­ro­spec­tive in Ger­many to Arnulf Rain­er. In the same year, he was rep­re­sent­ed at the 11th São Paulo Bien­ni­al and took part in doc­u­men­ta 5 (1972), 6 (1977) and 7 (1982) in Kas­sel. In 1978, the artist rep­re­sent­ed Aus­tria at the Venice Bien­nale. In 1981, Rain­er became a mem­ber of the Acad­e­my of Arts in Berlin and fol­lowed an appoint­ment to the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts in Vien­na, where he taught until 1995. The Arnulf Rain­er Muse­um was opened in 2009 in the his­toric Frauen­bad in Baden, which was used as a supra-region­al exhi­bi­tion cen­ter from 1973. Arnulf Rain­er received numer­ous awards and hon­ors, includ­ing the Aus­tri­an State Prize for Graph­ic Arts in 1966 and the Grand Aus­tri­an State Prize in 1978. In 2015, Rain­er was award­ed the Aus­tri­an Cross of Hon­or for Sci­ence and Art. Arnulf Rain­er, one of the most influ­en­tial con­tem­po­rary artists and one of the best-known Aus­tri­an painters, is con­sid­ered the founder of Informel in Aus­tria. He achieved inter­na­tion­al fame through his over­paint­ings. Arnulf Rain­er lives and works in Upper Aus­tria and Tener­ife. 2016 — first exhi­bi­tion at Galerie Welz.