NEORAUCH(b. 1960)Grotte.Signed and dated "Rauch '04" lower right. Oil on canvas.98 ⅜ x 82 ¾ in. (250 x 210 cm).Executed in 2004.Provenance
Eigen + Art, Leipzig/BerlinExhibited
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie International, October 9, 2004 - March 20, 2005Literature
M. Piranio, ed., 54th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh 2004, p. 206 (illustrated)For a number of years now Neo Rauch's work has occupied a singular position in the world of Contemporary painting. One of the forerunners of the Leipzig school of painters who have garnered critical international acclaim in recent years, Rauch's other-worldy compositions continue to mature and develop upon a course that is firmly cementing his position at the forefront of this movement and the annals of Contemporary Art History. "Nowhere else can there be found such a paradoxical kind of chronicling , a way of working with presumably obsolete tools that nevertheless reveals and creates Contemporary resonance" (H. Kunde, taken from Neo Rauch: Arbeiten auf Papier, 2003-2004, Ostfildern- Ruit 2004, n.p.).

Rauch's roots are inveterately East German, and relate to a sensibility particular to that area of the Country. However, that being said the scenes that he chooses to illustrate are far-reaching and generalized enough to appeal to certain Western ideals. They "appeal to a generic Western Milieu at mid-century, in which the achievements of Industry and architecture are visible, and work and study take precedence over leisure" (G. Garrels from L. Hoptman, 54th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh 2004, p. 204).

In his most recent paintings, of which the present lot Grotte is included, Rauch adjusts his course once again and seems to be alluding to or harkening back to what can be construed as relating more closely to nineteenth-century Romanticism. His visual power of imagination is a stand-out element of these works and with this he melds the obvious with the shadowy, the recognizable with the incomprehensible, and forms dissonant units, thus transforming a lasting remembrance to the viewer's visual store of memories. This integrative quality, which underlies all parts of his handsome , unique pieces, resists being quickly consumed. Instead, it seizes the viewer with the disturbing restlessness of an insoluble riddle. At the same time, however, this visual world appears highly familiar, offering a sense of possibilities saturated with reality; one has the feeling one recognizes the scenes, protagonists, and props, seemingly taken from a storehouse of pattern books, posters and comic books of past eras and fashion (Kunde, n.p.).

In Grotte, Rauch demonstrates these ideas with superb skill and acumen. The composition is riddled with imagery and symbolism that perhaps only exist in a lexicon stored with in the depths of his own mind. Rauch's references are an enigma to his audience; known only to himself further adding to the mystery and allure of his paintings.

"My pictures are allegories. I try to take the picture ideas that are washed upon me and use the art of painting to employ them as allegoric situations on the canvas. What happens on the canvas is not necessarily congruent with my idea of the picture or with the one that was given to me. A moment of transformation always takes place. This is very comparable with an attempt to relate a dream at once becomes an abstraction. I cannot convey a dream to anyone." (B. Schwenk, "Palette as Shelter and Threat. A Conversation with "Neo Rauch", taken from Sammlung Goetz, The Mystery of Painting, 2002, p. 122)

"[Grotte] manages to capture a complex sense of a reality that is both bleak and hopeful, earnest and absurd, frozen and dynamic, beyond our control and palpable. Like dreams, Rauch's paintings have a vividness and a connection to experience that makes us think that, with enough scrutiny, some truth can be gleaned from them. But in the end they remain parallel and self-contained, mirrors of our world into which we may gaze but not enter, somehow linked to day-to-day reality but incommensurate with it" (Carnegie p. 204).