Arnulf Rainer
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Arnulf Rainer
roportionsordnungen. Malerei, Graphik, Plastik (Painting, Graphics, Sculpture), 1954
13351-BK
11 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (30 x 21 cm)
Vienna. Galerie Würthle. Sheets loose as issued in original plain orange wrappers. Very slight toning to edges of sheets commensurate with age; a very good copy. Three text leaves printed on thin blue/grey paper, consisting of title page, list of exhibited works, and artist’s introduction. With six linear black-and-white lithograph plates + six original hand-colored collages (narrow vertical strips of 2 or 3 sections each). Arnulf Rainer is primarily regarded as a pioneer of the Austrian movement “art informel.†Influenced by the surrealist principle of écriture automatique, in the 1950s he developed his obsessive Übermalungen or overpainting. However, Rainer himself called the Übermalungen he made in the latter half of the 1950s a dialectic reaction to his previous Proportionen work (1953/54). This early period of Rainer’s œuvre, with its geometric study and obsession with orderly dimensions, has been somewhat overlooked. These proportional works were originally shown at one of Rainer’s first solo exhibitions, held at the Galerie Würthle in Vienna, September - October 1954. Exceedingly rare. Only one copy located at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien; no holdings in North America. [Ref. Arnulf Rainer, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 1981, p. 39; Arnulf Rainer, Verdeckt - Entdeckt, Galerie Ulysses, Vienna 1987, pp. 30-32; Galerie Würthle, Katalog der Jubiläumsausstellung, Vienna 1995, p. 40; Arnulf Rainer "Aller Anfang ist schwer", Frühe Arbeiten 1949-1961, Arnulf Rainer Museum and Du Mont Buchverlag, 2009, pp. 138-159]. Complete with six offset lithographic plates of linear drawings, and six plates each with hand-painted collage strips by Rainer. Very rare to find a complete copy. All sheets loose as issued in original plain orange wrappers.
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