Neo Rauch, Weiche, 1999, Deutsche Bank Collection, Courtesy Galerie Eigen + Art, Leipzig/Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010
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Neo Rauch, Quecksilber, 2003, private collection
photo Uwe Walter, COURTESY GALERIE EIGEN + ART, BERLIN / DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK, © VG BILD-KUNST, BONN 2010
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Neo Rauch, Die Vorführung, 2006, Rubell Family Collection, Miami
photo Uwe Walter, COURTESY GALERIE EIGEN + ART, BERLIN / DAVID ZWIRNER, NEW YORK ,© VG BILD-KUNST, BONN 2010
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Neo Rauch is regarded as the most important German painters of his generation, which is sufficient reason for two renowned museums to celebrate his 50th birthday. In parallel, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and the Museum der bildenden Künste in Leipzig are devoting large-scale retrospectives to the artist in an exhibition titled Begleiter. The two museums are each showing 60 paintings, most of them large-format works. Many of the exhibits come from private collections and are now being shown publicly for the first time. The Deutsche Bank Collection was among those that provided works for the show. The painting Weiche from 1999 is on view in Leipzig, while Staudamm and Das Haus, both from 1996, are included in the Munich exhibition. Deutsche Bank has acquired works by the artist since the early 1990s, chiefly works on paper. In 2001, the Deutsche Guggenheim devoted an exhibition to Rauch, his first solo museum show featuring works from the corporate collection. After viewing Rauch's paintings in Berlin, experts such as Lisa Dennison, then Chief Curator of the New York Guggenheim Museum, became aware of the exceptional quality of the artist's work. As a result, the show gave important impetus to the international career of the artist, who was a master student under Bernhard Heisig, and highlighted the importance of the New Leipzig School.
In Rauch's enigmatic paintings, personal experiences combine with inner pictures and an investigation of German history into complex compositions. With parallel montages, associative scenery, and somnambulistic agents, the world appears in his canvases like a stage on which past and present mix. Rauch alludes to art-historical heroes such as Tintoretto and El Greco, as well as to 20th century artists, including Beckmann and Bacon. At the same time, his work is very contemporary. He reflects upheavals in inner Germany history and portrays the early 21st century as a period in which enlightenment and ideological infatuation collide. The current double show does not present his work in chronological order. Rather, Begleiter is arranged based on thematic aspects, enabling the artist's characteristic motifs to emerge more clearly. Anyone who would like to become acquainted with Neo Rauch's surreal cosmos can do so at the shows in Leipzig and Munich, which present a greater variety of the artist's work than any previous exhibition.
NEO RAUCH . BEGLEITER
Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig
April 18 to August 15, 2010
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
April 10 to August 15, 2010
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