Arnulf Rainer artwork – Dorotheum 2026

Lot description

(Baden near Vienna 1929 – 2025 Enzenkirchen, Upper Austria) “Vielhandbild” (Various Hands Painting), Fingerpainting, 1975, signed A. Rainer, artists label with title, technique and size on the reverse, oil on cardboard on wooden frame, 73 x 102 cm, framed This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity signed by the artist, issued Vienna, 4.5.2022 Provenance: Private Collection, Italy Aste Boetto, Genoa, 17 April 2018, lot 161 Private Collection, Czech Republic Exhibited: Venezia, Biennale, October 1978 Literature: Linguaggio de corpo. Körpersprache. Body language. Biennale di Venezia 1978. Austria. Arnulf Rainer, Brüder Rosenbaum 1978 (pub.), page 43 black and white photo. The work is dated here with 1973. “What began with an impulsive slap that I delivered to my own photographic effigy gradually developed into a form of painting in which the use of my own limbs revealed itself as a reservoir of bodily gestures translated into painterly form. Gestures such as touching, stroking, or striking may find their concrete realization in video art through the palpation, slapping, or anointing of another person. Yet the traces of my own fingers on the pure white surface of the painting are sufficient to drive me into a kind of frenzy. They allow me to imagine the rigid white rectangle of the picture as a beloved whose touch leaves behind those marks that here assert themselves as the qualities of painting. There have also been steps toward direct contact with real skin, toward caressing, smearing, or scratching. Their photographic documentation and archiving may be mentioned here, although they are not reproduced. The South German idiom “Ich schmier’ dir eine”, a colloquial synonym for the threat of a slap or a forceful hand – cheek contact, might lead some to interpret this painting in a one-sided manner. In most cases, however, the works began with gentle tactile explorations of the picture ground. Only when insufficient vitality, emerged, did I gradually begin to stroke, rub, and eventually strike. Nevertheless, I continue to dream of soft and fluid forms of contact through which a pictorial vitality might be awakened, one that reflects a more intense emotional excitation.” Arnulf Rainer in DAS BILD ALS PARTNER, Über Hand- Fuß- und Fingermalerei, in Arnulf Rainer. Verdeckt – Entdeckt, Ulysses Vienna, 1987.