Arnulf Rainer

Arnulf Rainer (born 8 December 1929, in Baden, Austria), is an Austrian painter and is internationally renowned for his abstract informal art. In his early years, Rainer was influenced by Surrealism. In 1950, he founded the Hundsgruppe (dog group) together with Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer, and Josef Mikl. After 1954, Rainer's style evolved towards Destruction of Forms, with blackenings, overpaintings, and maskings of illustrations and photographs dominating his later work. He was close to the Vienna Actionism, featuring body art and painting under drug influence. He did a lot of work on Hiroshima, after the bombing. In 1978, he received the Great Austrian National Prize. In the same year, and in 1980, he became the Austrian representative...