Etching and aquatint on wove paper
Austria, 2002
Arnulf Rainer (b. 1929) – Austrian printmaker, photographer and painter
Signed in pencil lower right ‘A Rainer’
Numbered in pencil lower left ‘38/49’
Full margins; framed and matted
Image dimensions: 10 x 7 ¾ in. (25.4 x 19.7 cm.)
Sheet dimensions: 21 1/8 ? 15 in. (53.67 x 38.1 cm.)
Overall dimensions: 22 x 16 ¼ in. (55.6 x 41.3 cm.)
Very good condition
Another impression recently sold for over $2,000 at auction

Presented is a color etching from Arnulf Rainer’s Marilyn Mythos series. The work shows the famous American actress Marilyn Monroe smiling towards the audience with aggressive sprays of red color. Rainer has had an interest in portraiture since the beginning of his career and, in this work, he compares the image of the deceased actress who was once so full of life with the energetic surges of color that surround her.

Executed in 2002, this etching and aquatint on wove paper is signed and numbered 38/49. With full margins with sheet measures 21 1/8 x 15 inches. In overall good condition with no evidence of tears or repairs.

Arnulf Rainer (Austrian, b. 1929)

Arnulf Rainer started his career painting as a self-taught artist in the mid-1940s and was introduced to contemporary art through a British Council exhibition in 1947 that included the works of Paul Nash, Francis Bacon, Stanley Spencer, Henry Moore and Edward Burra. It was around this time he started producing portraits. While attending the Staatsgewerbeschule at Villach from 1947 to 1949 he became interested in the Surrealism art movement. In 1950 he produced his first prints and over the years he explored a wide variety of media, including etching, drypoint, lithography and screenprinting. Though he typically depicts representational subjects, he was inspired during a visit to Paris in 1951 by the spontaneous abstract works of Georges Mathieu, Jackson Pollock, Jean-Paul Riopelle and Wols. Soon, he began to turn away from Surrealism, studying optical disintegration and the destruction of form and producing works that evoked a sense of immediacy and impulsiveness much like Automatism. Through the following years, Rainer has experimented with different media like photography and painting. He has also been interested in exploring a number of themes such as mathematics, religious theories and practices, nature and life and death. Today, Arnulf Rainer’s work can be viewed within the prestigious collections of the Arnulf Rainer Museum in Austria, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Art Institute of Chicago, to name a few.