FINGER PAINTING (Yellow/Green/Black) Arnulf Rainer

• A characteristic work from Rainer’s significant series of hand and finger paintings of the early 1980s • Ecstatic painterly gestures and vibrant colour contrasts convey an immediate, physical expressiveness • Hands and fingers as direct tools of a radically free visual language The hand and finger paintings mark a decisive expansion of Arnulf Rainer’s artistic means of expression. Since the early 1970s, the artist has increasingly dispensed with the brush, employing hands, fingers and, at times, his entire body as direct instruments of painting. Wiping, striking and smudging become spontaneous, physically driven gestures that make the painting process itself visible. This work, created in the early 1980s, demonstrates the full expressive power of this technique. Broad, jet-black swathes of colour run through the composition, overlapping and meeting with vibrant shades of red, orange and yellow. Whilst the dark, impasto-like traces of paint lend the picture a powerful structure, fine, nervous lines and sweeping smudges unfold in between. The interplay of densification and dissolution, controlled movement and impulsive gesture gives rise to a composition full of tension, almost ecstatic in nature. Furthermore, the cross-like interweaving of the black bands of colour echoes a motif that has accompanied Rainer’s work since its inception. As early as documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, Rainer’s gestural, increasingly colour-intensive works attracted considerable attention. This finger painting belongs to this important creative phase, during which his painting evolved from concentrated overpainting towards a new, physically determined freedom of expression. | 1929 Baden bei Wien - Wien 2025 | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Gemälde | Nummer: 26x2242 | Provenance: Ehemals Galerie Ruberl, Wien; Privatsammlung, Österreich.

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