Rainer Fetting

RAINER FETTING (Wilhelmshaven, Germany, 1949).
“Bitch,” 1995.
Color lithograph on paper, E.A. edition.
Mounted, signed, dated, and titled in pencil in the lower margin.
Measurements: 76 × 56.5 cm.

“Bitch” belongs to a period of full artistic maturity for Rainer Fetting, when the figurative and expressionist language that had helped renew German painting since the late 1970s was already fully established. The work translates the gestural energy of his painting into the realm of printmaking: black is applied in broad masses and seemingly spontaneous strokes, while salmon-colored tones and brief blue accents construct a female figure with a strong frontal presence.

Fetting was one of the leading figures of the German Neue Wilde movement. In 1977, he co-founded the Galerie am Moritzplatz in Berlin alongside artists such as Salomé, Helmut Middendorf, and Bernd Zimmer—a pivotal hub for the resurgence of figurative, gestural, and chromatically intense painting. His international reputation was cemented by his participation in *A New Spirit in Painting* at the Royal Academy in London in 1981 and in the 1982 Venice Biennale. His work is held, among other institutions, at the Städel Museum, the Berlinische Galerie, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.