Arnulf Rainer, a revolutionary figure in postwar Austrian art, has died aged 96

"Arnulf Rainer, a leading figure of the Austrian avant-garde whose gestural paintings confronted the atrocities of the Holocaust and Hiroshima and whose unflinching approach to experimental self-portraiture made him instantly recognisable, has died aged 96; his death on 18 December was confirmed by his gallery Thaddaeus Ropac who described him as one of the most influential artists of the post-war period."

"In this environment, Rainer's practice thrived as he became a crucial figure in the reawakening of Austrian contemporary art. He was one of the founding members of Galerie nächst St Stephan, one of the very few galleries in postwar Vienna which offered a vital meeting point for artists seeking alternatives to a conservative art world playing safe and desperately seeking commercial viability."

Arnulf Rainer emerged from postwar Austria as a self-taught, restless artist who rejected academic traditions and found kinship with Surrealism and Art Informel. He moved to Vienna in the late 1940s and developed a practice shaped by the city's rubble, scarcity, and lingering trauma. He co-founded Galerie nächst St Stephan, helping to relaunch Austrian contemporary art and launching figures such as Maria Lassnig. Rainer pioneered Übermalungen and gestural works that overpainted photographs and portraits, emphasising psychological intensity and insisting that art confront historical atrocities rather than obscure them.

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