Sale: 590 / Evening Sale, June 06. 2025 in Munich 
Lot 125000240
Lot 125000240 
125000240
Rainer Fetting
Rückenakt (Ausblick), 1982.
Dispersion on canvas
Estimate:
€ 80,000 - 120,000
$ 86,400 - 129,600
Information on buyer's premium, taxation and resale right compensation will be available four weeks before the auction.
Rückenakt (Ausblick). 1982.
Dispersion on canvas.
Signed, dated and titled "Rückenakt" on the reverse of the canvas. 251 x 202 cm (98.8 x 79.5 in).
• A larger-than-life, erotically charged male nude in the characteristic vivid expressiveness of the “Junge Wilde”.
• The prospect as a place of longing: the vast Alpine landscape starkly contrasts the walled-in city of West Berlin.
• In the year of its creation, Rainer Fetting featured in the critical “Zeitgeist” exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, and in the 40th Venice Biennale.
• The artist was a leading figure in the revolutionary Berlin art scene and a renovator of figurative painting in the early 1980s.
• His works from the 1980s are among the most sought-after works on the international auction market (source: artprice.com).
• Many of them are in leading museums like the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, the Pinakothek der Moderne der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, the Portland Art Museum, and Tate Gallery, London.
PROVENANCE: Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Cologne (1988).
Monika and Thomas Verhoeven Collection, USA.
Galerie Wolfgang Gmyrek, Düsseldorf (with the gallery label and the stamp on the reverse of the stretcher).
Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the above in 2009).
EXHIBITION: From the collection of Monika and Thomas Verhoeven. From "Junge Wilde" to video, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York, Jun. 19-Aug. 15, 1999, p. 22 (Illustrated)
BerlinOttana. Pittura irruente, MARCA / Museo Delle Arti, Catanzaro, Apr. 30-Oct. 9, 2011, p. 121 (Illustrated).
LITERATURE: Rainer Fetting und Jan Hoet, Fetting, Cologne 2009, p. 166, cat. no. 177 (with full-page ill.).
Simone Wiechers, Pelikane am Potsdamer Platz. Das neue Berlin im Werk von Rainer Fetting, in: Rainer Fetting, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 2011, p. 115.
Dispersion on canvas.
Signed, dated and titled "Rückenakt" on the reverse of the canvas. 251 x 202 cm (98.8 x 79.5 in).
• A larger-than-life, erotically charged male nude in the characteristic vivid expressiveness of the “Junge Wilde”.
• The prospect as a place of longing: the vast Alpine landscape starkly contrasts the walled-in city of West Berlin.
• In the year of its creation, Rainer Fetting featured in the critical “Zeitgeist” exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, and in the 40th Venice Biennale.
• The artist was a leading figure in the revolutionary Berlin art scene and a renovator of figurative painting in the early 1980s.
• His works from the 1980s are among the most sought-after works on the international auction market (source: artprice.com).
• Many of them are in leading museums like the Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main, the Pinakothek der Moderne der Bayerischen Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, the Portland Art Museum, and Tate Gallery, London.
PROVENANCE: Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Cologne (1988).
Monika and Thomas Verhoeven Collection, USA.
Galerie Wolfgang Gmyrek, Düsseldorf (with the gallery label and the stamp on the reverse of the stretcher).
Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the above in 2009).
EXHIBITION: From the collection of Monika and Thomas Verhoeven. From "Junge Wilde" to video, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York, Jun. 19-Aug. 15, 1999, p. 22 (Illustrated)
BerlinOttana. Pittura irruente, MARCA / Museo Delle Arti, Catanzaro, Apr. 30-Oct. 9, 2011, p. 121 (Illustrated).
LITERATURE: Rainer Fetting und Jan Hoet, Fetting, Cologne 2009, p. 166, cat. no. 177 (with full-page ill.).
Simone Wiechers, Pelikane am Potsdamer Platz. Das neue Berlin im Werk von Rainer Fetting, in: Rainer Fetting, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin 2011, p. 115.
"At the time, I was on a short skiing trip to Mount Pilatus with the male model Claus and some other friends.
The idea for the pictures came up on this occasion. Coming from the walled-in, concrete city of West Berlin, the vastness of the Alpine landscape is the strongest possible contrast. How do I translate that into a picture most compellingly? That's how the series of pictures came about. The “view” as a place of longing, so to speak. The male erotic body, which I painted at a time when “gay” was still forbidden and many people were still embarrassed by the subject at exhibition openings, adds to the effect.
And it still felt that way more than a decade later when I presented the painting “Ich find dich geil” (I think you're hot, 1982) from this series to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the lender and the whole team at the Chancellery..."
Rainer Fetting about the present work"Rückenakt (Ausblick)"
The idea for the pictures came up on this occasion. Coming from the walled-in, concrete city of West Berlin, the vastness of the Alpine landscape is the strongest possible contrast. How do I translate that into a picture most compellingly? That's how the series of pictures came about. The “view” as a place of longing, so to speak. The male erotic body, which I painted at a time when “gay” was still forbidden and many people were still embarrassed by the subject at exhibition openings, adds to the effect.
And it still felt that way more than a decade later when I presented the painting “Ich find dich geil” (I think you're hot, 1982) from this series to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the lender and the whole team at the Chancellery..."
Rainer Fetting about the present work"Rückenakt (Ausblick)"
125000240
Rainer Fetting
Rückenakt (Ausblick), 1982.
Dispersion on canvas
Estimate:
€ 80,000 - 120,000
$ 86,400 - 129,600
Information on buyer's premium, taxation and resale right compensation will be available four weeks before the auction.
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