Provocateur, master

Great painter Arnulf Rainer dies at the age of 96

Rainer was one of the most important representatives of Austrian post-war art. His work is extensive and multi-layered; after his beginnings in Surrealism and Art Informel, he achieved worldwide success above all with his overpaintings.(Bild: Alexander Tuma)

The world-famous Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer is dead. He died on Thursday at home in Upper Austria shortly after his 96th birthday.

Arnulf Rainer was born on December 8, 1929 in Baden near Vienna. A museum dedicated to him has been located there since 2009. At the beginning of the 1950s, after an initial interest in Surrealism and Art Informel, Rainer turned to his characteristic overpaintings. His own and other people's pictures, self-portraits and photos were covered in paint, charcoal pencil and ballpoint pen, and in 1961 he was even convicted in Wolfsburg for the public overpainting of a prize-winning picture. Rainer was controversial for years precisely because of his radical concealment of often religious symbols.

The Austrian artist at the opening of the Arnulf Rainer Museum in Baden in 2009(Bild: APA/HELMUT FOHRINGER)

Frequently exhibited and honored
From 1963, Rainer worked in various studios in Berlin, Munich, Cologne and finally Vienna, where his first retrospective was held at the Museum of the 20th Century in 1968. When he was to be awarded the City of Vienna Art Prize in 1974, he refused to take part in the presentation ceremony and the prize was revoked. In 1977 he took part in documenta 6, and a year later he represented Austria at the Venice Biennale. In 1978 he received the Grand Austrian State Prize and in the same year became a member of the Austrian Art Senate. It was only this April that Rainer was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria.

Rainer's "Portrait of Maria Lassnig": Rainer lived with her in Fuchs' studio at Haasgasse 10 in Vienna in 1949.(Bild: Lassnig Stiftung Bildrecht Wien)

Arnulf Rainer: Untitled sheet (1949; with the note: "A. Rainer. Property: E. Fuchs)(Bild: Lassnig Stiftung Bildrecht Wien)

Rainer was repeatedly listed in the top 100 in international art rankings, and the world's museums also honored the painter's artistic work with numerous solo exhibitions and retrospectives - from the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1984) to the Guggenheim in New York (1989) and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. The exhibition "Arnulf Rainer. abgrundtiefe. perspektiefe. Retrospective 1947-1997" at the Kunsthalle Krems (1997). In Vienna, major solo exhibitions have been shown at the Albertina (2014) and the Kunstforum (2000).

On his 95th birthday a year ago, Klaus Albrecht Schröder attested: "For over six decades, Arnulf Rainer has been a central figure in the visual arts far beyond Austria's borders. Like Thomas Bernhard, he is a grand master of the kind of public insult that is not an expression of a lack of courtesy, but a systematic component of an aesthetic of refusal: the principle of negation and rejection."

ORF 2 is showing the documentary "Der Übermaler Arnulf Rainer" on Sunday night to mark the artist's passing. The film by Claudia Teissig can be seen from 11.30 pm.