Sale: 525 / Evening Sale, Dec. 10. 2021 in Munich Lot 245

 

245
Arnulf Rainer
Ohne Titel, 1959.
Oil crayon. Oil and color oil chalks on canvas
Estimate:
€ 90,000 / $ 97,200
Sold:
€ 175,000 / $ 189,000

(incl. surcharge)
Ohne Titel. 1959.
Oil crayon. Oil and color oil chalks on canvas.
Signed on the lower left. Signed, dated "1959 Wien" and inscribed with the dimensions on the reverse. Additionally signed on the reverse. 61.5 x 82.5 cm (24.2 x 32.4 in). [CH].

• Part of the same German private collection for more than 50 years.
• Early work from the first period of the overpaintings in which Arnulf Rainer made the extinction of the subject his anti-artistic principle.
• Overpainting remains the key principle of Rainer's creation up untiul today, and is an art-historically relevant contribution to European post-war art.
• Made the year the artist participated in documenta II, Kassel
.

We are grateful to the Studio Rainer for the kind expert advice.

PROVENANCE: Private collection Baden-Württemberg.
Private collection North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the above in 1971).

"Rainer works out his individuality in his püictures, and thus tries to give his pictures their individuality: something flat, taut, soft, dense, emotional, effluent or calm. "
Dieter Honisch, in: Ex. cat. Arnulf Rainer, Nationalgalerie Berlin et al, 1980/81, p. 46.

Today Arnulf Rainer is known as one of Austria's internationally most renowned artists today. In 1959, when the work offered here was created, Arnulf Rainer's works were represented at documenta II in Kassel, and he also took part in documenta exhibitions in 1972 and 1977, the same year the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, the Kunsthalle Bern and the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover showed a comprehensive retrospective. In 1978 Rainer represented Austria at the 38th Venice Biennial. In 2019/20 the Albertina in Vienna dedicated a comprehensive solo exhibition to the artist, the second one in five years.
As early as in the early 1950s, Rainer began to establish the unusual artistic principle of overpainting in his works, which is still considered an important contribution to post-war art and has remained the central principle of his work. He had left both the Vienna University of Applied Arts and the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1949 after just a few days and decided to become a self-taught artist. By rejecting a traditional understanding of art and painting, Rainer's "overpainting" became his way to "paint in order to leave painting" (Arnulf Rainer, quoted from: Armin Zwei, in: ex. cat. Arnulf Rainer Retrospective 1950-1977, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover, 1977, p. 11). A visit to an exhibition at, among others, Galerie Nina Dausset in Paris, where he saw works by Jean Dubuffet and the early representatives of Tachism, inspired Rainer to examine the principles of automatism, optical decomposition and blind painting over the following years. In addition to the "Proportions" and "Blind Drawings" made as of the mid-1950s, the first "Overpaintings" were also created. Works in which the monochrome black paint covers almost the entire image surface. The underlying composition, the ultimately concealed composition, plays an important role despite the gradual erasure, its drowning in the black mass of paint: it remains the necessary framework for the overpainting, which, even if it is completely concealed, still determines the form of this concealment, which the artist also underlines with works‘ titles: "Dornen, darüber Finsternis" (Thorns, Darkness Above), "Nacht, darunter ein ganzer Tag (Night, A Whole Day Underneath) or "Der Himmel verhängt" (Overcast Sky).

In the work offered here the vivid, brightly colored oil crayon drawing, as well as the background also pop through the overpainting here and there. The edge of the picture remains untouched, gives space to the dark cloud of color and creates a particularly appealing tension through the contrast of the monochrome black and light background. In addition, the temporal sequence of the creative process is both visiblea nd tangible: the traces of the earlier, now covered, colored chalk drawing are not completely erased, but only partially covered, so that a simultaneity of past and present arises.
With this partly quite painterly and gestural execution, the artist revisits the "Zentralgestaltungen" from the early 1950s, in which Rainer, according to the principles of automatism and blind painting, paints according to the movement of his body. At the same time, the work also resembles the black overpaintings that came after the "Zentralgestaltungen", works in which Rainer covers almost the entire image surface. In contrast to the otherwise very two-dimensional monochrome works, Rainer finds a very painterly, gestural solution which not only combines darkness and light, flat surfaces and rhythmic motion, but also monochrome and color in a particularly attractive symbiosis. [CH]



245
Arnulf Rainer
Ohne Titel, 1959.
Oil crayon. Oil and color oil chalks on canvas
Estimate:
€ 90,000 / $ 97,200
Sold:
€ 175,000 / $ 189,000

(incl. surcharge)