Neo Rauch

Galerie Eigen + Art, Berlin
Acquired by the present owner from the above

The instant we lay eyes on a painting by Neo Rauch, we can scarcely remain indifferent, the nature of the subject matter, the treatment of space, ruptures of scale and incongruity of certain motifs conspire to rivet our attention and destabilize us.

 - Réal Lussier (Exh. Cat., Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Neo Rauch, September 2006 - January 2007)

Born in 1960, Neo Rauch lives and works in Leipzig, a major industrial center of the old East Germany.  Exhibiting a true mastery of painterly ability, Rauch’s imagery contains a potent vocabulary, rendered in chalky hues and other-worldly tones.   

A military figure, echoing East Germany’s past, hunches with a rifle behind a giant mushroom in a field of golden wheat.  A dreamlike narrative begins to unfold; at times, the image seems believably real, even familiar, and then, the giant mushroom cap comes into focus, an element from some hallucination, impossible really.  The exacting calmness of his work is achieved through subdued colors, the fantastical elements seeming less detached from reality as a result.  The ‘meaning’ of the painting is indecipherable and not at all essential to the enjoyment and power of Späher.  Engaging, filled with vitality and imbibed with the ‘Now’, Späher is a strong example of Neo Rauch’s work, fully exhibiting the iconographic imagery and technical skill which have launched Rauch to the forefront of Contemporary Art.