Neo Rauch: Gespenster
Edited by Gerd Harry Lybke
Neo Rauch (born 1960) is one of the most important figurative painters of his generation and a pioneer of the so-called new Leipzig school of painting. Gespenster (Ghosts) is published for Rauch’s most recent solo exhibition of the same name at Galerie Eigen+Art Leipzig, in 2013. The catalogue contains the first reproductions of the 20 new paintings that were shown in the exhibition, as well as detailed views of the canvases and installation shots. Rauch’s new paintings portray brooding phantasmagoric scenarios composed of several different snapshots that spatially (and sometimes narratively) overlay each other. A rusty, red-brown undertone suffuses the pictures, its muteness emphasized against intensely chromatic areas. Unlike the large-scale paintings, Rauch’s smaller works are softer and more graphic, with isolated figures and deserted landscapes, like fragments from completed pictures that have become independent.
Publisher: Lubok Verlag
Artists: Neo Rauch
Contributors: Gerd Harry Lybke
Publication Date: 2013
Binding: Softcover
Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 12 in (22.2 x 30.5 cm)
Pages: 56
Reproductions: 35 color, 4 duotone
ISBN: 9783941601840
Retail: $40 US & Canada | £20 | €25
Status: Available
Neo Rauch
Neo Rauch’s paintings are characterized by a unique combination of realism and surrealist abstraction. In many of his compositions, human figures engaged in manual labor or indeterminable tasks work against backdrops of mundane architecture, industrial settings, or bizarre and often barren landscapes. These figures, though squarely centered in his paintings, often have the appearance of being part of still lifes devoid of a human presence or collaged elements belonging to different time zones. Scale is frequently arbitrary and non-perspectival, which adds to an overall dreamlike atmosphere; the spatial relationships construct their own imaginary realm.