Neo Rauch

Neo Rauch addresses the fundamental issues of painting in the modern era – the relationship between plane and spatial illusion, between abstraction and figuration – in a new way. Der Rückzug (The retreat), a painting whose title remains enigmatic, manifests this clearly in the cluster of coloured brushstrokes in the lower right-hand corner, which through the shadow it casts has a three-dimensional appearance, but out of which, at the same time, something sinister seems to be growing. Rauch’s style is characterized by his incorporation of popular images of the twentieth century, including comics and advertising brochures, his combination of surreal, dream-like elements, his rational play with the irrational and his choice of palette. A particular feature of the present work are its quotations from the artist’s own œuvre: there appear to be two tondi hanging in the pavilion in the background, one of them Rauch’s Plazenta of 1993, an important painting in his artistic development.