Painter With a Vision

Neo Rauch is one of Germanys most successful artists. He works in a Leipzig studio with no nameplate and no doorbell. The secrecy is intended for Rauch strictly limits the number of studio visitors.
Rauch favors bleached-out colors for his work - set somewhere between Surrealism and Social Realism. The prominent figures of his visual world often look like Communist, working-class heroes frozen in disastrous situations. They populate stage-like landscapes filled with empty military barracks, gas stations, abandoned factories and empty speech bubbles. There is an eerie, distraught atmosphere inherent in all of his paintings.

Rauch was born and reared in East Germany. When he was 4 weeks old, his parents died in a car accident. He could not recall many happy moments from his childhood. It was only when he became a student at the Academy of Visual Arts that he stopped feeling like an outsider. It was also here in the early 90's that he developed his distinctive painting style.
"It's this strange twilight zone between reason and irrationality where the artist hunts for prey," Rauch said. "If I could really explain this, I wouldn't have to paint it."
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Irish Art