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until 30.04. | #4612ARTatBerlin | Galerie Dittmar presents on Wednesday, 12. March 2025 a Solo-exhibition by the artist Arnulf Rainer.
Arnulf Rainer’s status as one of the most important and pioneering artists of the post-war era and beyond has become increasingly apparent with the passage of time. Rainer opened up completely new approaches to art, in the radicality of his approach to themes and motifs, in the extraordinarily broad and nuanced range of expression. It was articulated in the expressive, vehement gestures, in the monochromatic and disruptive additions, in the creative process of taking possession of pictorial evidence, and finally in a subtle understanding of color.
Arnulf Rainer “did not submit to any convention, neither in terms of content nor form. The object and goal of his endeavor is painting itself, which he wants to bring out of its one-dimensional ideological encrustation through a completely existential and elementary connection to his person… Thus, by painting and repainting and overpainting, he makes the driving forces of his own life visible, his vital restlessness, his demands, his doubts and perhaps also his hopes and disappointments. It is a painting that tolerates no illusion, because it wants to achieve perfection, a perfection in which all opposites and antagonisms dissolve.” (Dieter Honisch, catalog for the exhibition Arnulf Rainer, Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1980, p. 46)
Arnulf Rainer, 1975, Charcoal on paper, 31 x 44,5 cm
The first ever publications in Edition Dittmar appeared for the exhibitions on Arnulf Rainer in the gallery in 1999 and 2001. The second exhibition, on the Friedrich cycle in 2001, was at the suggestion of the artist, who had been working on Caspar David Friedrich since 1999.
The review of this gallery exhibition in the Frankfurter Allgemeine stated: “The reworking of Caspar David Friedrich’s works was previously completely unknown… Rainer’s preoccupation with the romantic landscape seems to have reached at least a preliminary completion here.” (F.A.Z., October 20, 2001)
In 2003, a selection of the Friedrich cycle was shown in the Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin, in the cabinet rooms next to the Friedrich Hall, on the initiative of the then Director General of the Berlin Museums, Prof. Peter-Klaus Schuster.
At the same time as the current gallery exhibition on early phases of Rainer’s work, further exhibitions on the artist are being held to mark his 95th birthday. In Paris at the Galerie Lelong on the graphic works, at the Galerie Ropac in the Villa Kast Salzburg on Goya and on the landscapes since the eighties, then at the Arnulf Rainer Museum in Baden near Vienna the institutional exhibition “Arnulf Rainer. The Nothing against Everything”.
Opening: Wednesday, March 12, 2025, 12 to 6 pm
Exhibition dates: Wednesday, March 12 to Wednesday, April 30, 2025
To the Gallery
Title image caption: Arnulf Rainer, Caspar David Friedrich-Zyklus, 1999-2001, Ink, chalk, black pencil, 29,5 x 39,8 cm
Exhibition Arnulf Rainer – Galerie Dittmar | Zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin
