Arnulf Rainer’s Emotional, Avant-Garde Practices

The world-renowned Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer has gone through several distinct periods of physically intense, sometimes manic painting practice. His “retirement” commenced a decade ago, when 26 of his paintings were destroyed in his studio by unknown vandals. Regardless of his current level of output, however, the artist’s work continues to be shown extensively across the globe; Rainer’s impact on various 20th-century art-historical periods continues to be the subject of extensive study. 

Nineteen of Rainer’s paintings are currently on view at Mana Contemporary, through the Ayn Foundation, as part of a series of year-long solo exhibitions. Of particular interest are the artist’s seminal “overpaintings,” a technique he has been developing since the mid-1950s. As a young artist, Rainer was fascinated by the Surrealists; later, his work was compared to Action Painting. However, neither of these schools of thought could contain Rainer’s aggressive and ever-changing practice. A two-time art school dropout and a truly avant-garde painter, Rainer experimented with working while in various altered states through the ’60s and began to heavily incorporate film through the ’70s. 

Rainer’s “overpaintings” began when the artist used various materials to block out or work over elements of existing self-portraits, often in overblown ways. “The faces I drew earlier all had impossible wrinkles, fake furrows, invented accents,” the artist noted in 1980. “It wasn’t until I began to overwork the expressive photos of the faces that I discovered to my surprise: a bunch of new, unknown people who were lurking within me, but who my muscles alone couldn’t formulate.”