Arnulf Rainer (1929–2025) was one of the leading figures of postwar Austrian contemporary art. Born in Baden, Austria, he developed an early interest in experimental and anti-academic artistic practices, quickly abandoning formal studies at Vienna’s art academies after conflicts with their conservative teaching methods. In 1950, he co-founded the avant-garde Hundsgruppe alongside Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer and Josef Mikl.
Initially influenced by Surrealism and Art Informel, Rainer became internationally known for his “overpaintings” (Übermalungen), a process through which he covered paintings, photographs and printed images with aggressive, gestural marks and layered interventions. Throughout his career, he explored themes of identity, mortality, spirituality and psychological intensity in major series such as the Face Farces, death masks, crucifixions and the Hiroshima cycle. From the 1960s onward, photography, body art and altered states of consciousness also became central to his practice.
Rainer maintained a powerful dialogue with art history, reworking images after artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Gustave Doré, while also engaging deeply with outsider art and raw artistic expression. His highly physical visual language, based on erasure, accumulation and transformation, had a lasting impact on postwar European painting.
His work has been the subject of major retrospectives at institutions including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Centre Pompidou, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and the Albertina. His works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art and the Tate.