Neo Rauch - Hardcover

This is sleepwalking through a curious alter-reality. This is a monograph of truly epic scale. It is limited to 1,000 numbered copies, each signed by Neo Rauch. Bursting with radiant and unsettling juxtapositions, Neo Rauch's paintings are wormholes into worlds of startling psychological power and cultural collisions. His scenes involve the viewer in a history that is at once mythic, intimate, and present. Through a deep consideration of philosophy, art history, literature, and his own dreamscape, Rauch's paintings depict the precipices of progress and the struggles of communication. Electrified by their rich palettes, Rauch's fragmented landscapes and timeless characters dance between pop and baroque, social and psychological, graphic and painterly. Born in Leipzig in 1960, Rauch learned his trade behind the Iron Curtain. His influences and interests were shaped by personal hardship and the tumultuous changes of East Germany after the Wall fell. In the late 1980s, having finished his studies at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig under Arnold Rink and Bernhard Heisig, he explored diverse approaches to painting in dialogue with works he encountered by Francis Bacon, the New Wild painters, and the pre-Renaissance painters he saw during his travels in Italy. By 1993, he had arrived at the unique style of intertwining figuration and abstraction that characterizes his oeuvre and has brought him international attention and respect. Only a book of truly epic scale could begin to unpack the emotional, historical, and formal density of Rauch's canvases. Comprising over 450 pages, including more than 250 large-scale reproductions, this monograph is the most inclusive collection of his work to date. It offers a generous range of writings that illuminate the personal, symbolic, and formal complexities of Rauch's world. Wolfgang Buscher's open and sensitive account of a walk through Rauch's neighborhood reveals the painter's compassion and modesty. Harald Kunde tracks Rauch's stylistic development through its main semantic threads and historical influences. Gary Tinterow draws from his work on Rauch's exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum to offer the reader a guide to the symbols that form the painter's extensive mythology. These essays complement Rauch's work with nuanced insights while allowing the images room to speak on their own. Within this atlas, readers will discover the rich density and enigmatic openness of Rauch's paintings.

Neo Rauch (*1960) graduated from the Leipzig Hochschule fur Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Visual Arts) as master student of Bernhard Heisig in 1990. In 1997 he won the art prize of the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper which lead to a first institutional exhibition at the Museum der bildenden Kunste in Leipzig. The breakthrough year was 2000 with a touring exhibition at Galerie fur Zeitgenossische Kunst in Leipzig, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and at the Kunsthalle Zurich. Since then he has shown at a variety of venues including the Venice Biennale, a solo show at the Vienna Albertina, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York; in 2010 a major double retrospective simultaneously opened in Leipzig and Munich. Rauch lives and works in Leipzig. Wolfgang Buscher has written several books and is currently working as a writer for the "Dossier" section of DIE ZEIT. Most recent publications are the bestsellers: Berlin - Moscow. A Journey on Foot and Germany, a Journey. Harald Kunde is director of the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen. Numerous exhibition projects and publications on contemporary art (including Sophie Calle, Chuck Close, Tacita Dean, Franz Gertsch, Barbara Kruger, Neo Rauch, Roman Signer, Andreas Slominski, Erwin Wurm). Gary Tinterow is Curator in Charge of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and has edited numerous books in that capacity, most recently Gustave Courbet, Neo Rauch: Para, and Cai Guo-Quiang: Transparent Monument. Hans Werner Holzwarth was a photographer before launching a corporate design firm. He has collaborated on book designs with Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Albert Oehlen, Richard Prince, Kiki Smith, and John Waters. For TASCHEN, he edited Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, and Art Now Vol 3.