Arnulf Rainer

ARNULF RAINER (Baden, Austria, 1929-2025).
Untitled.
Lithograph, copy 19/35.
Signed and justified by hand.
Measurements: 65 x 50 cm; 73 x 57 cm (frame).
Rainer is an Austrian abstract informal painter. Rainer founded, in 1950, the Hundsgruppe (in English, "group of dogs") together with Ernst Fuchs, mainly due to his interest in architecture and surrealist art. But later, from 1954 onwards, Rainer's style evolved towards the destruction of forms, with repainting and masking of drawings and photographs. He is a painter closely linked to Viennese actionism, an artistic movement created by Hermann Nitsch, Otto Muehl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who in 1965 formed the Wiener Aktionsgruppe. This style was a way of reacting against American abstract expressionism, which was inspired by pagan and Christian rituals and the theories of Freud, Jung and Reich. Viennese Actionism only lasted a few years and was characterized by body art and painting under the influence of drugs. From 1981 until 1995, Rainer worked as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the same place where he had left his own studios many years before. Today his works are shown at MoMA and the Guggenheim Museum, among others.