(born Baden near Vienna in 1929) „Konstruktion TRR“, signed TRR and signed and dated TRR52 on the stretcher, oil on canvas, 53 x 64 cm, in a plexiglass case, (K)

Exhibited and illustrated in the catalogue: Arnulf Rainer, Werke 1948-2003, Retrospektive zum 75. Geburtstag, Galerie Elisabeth & Klaus Thoman, Innsbruck Nov.2004-Feb.2005 By freeing oneself, it awakens. To perceive something means to connect with it, without why or wherefore. To perceive something means to recognise it as something unique, the source of everything and its final destination. To perceive something means no longer to be absorbed with oneself or with others. Connected through it to everything, not to be bound, alone through it, not to be separated. To perceive something means no longer to be disconnected from one’s primal ground. By experiencing one’s origin, one returns to it. It is the “drive from life to being”. This path is straight. One travels along it effortlessly, facing that distant and most secret of lights. No longer seen by the others, one no longer sees oneself. Winning through loss, the poetry to counteract silence (the invisible versus painting), the adventure against a secretive, broad smile, hearing, what the ear doesn’t hear, not knowing, something sayable, fed by that still, inner fire, the entire being is woven into it. The mouth opened, without ever speaking, lives from the breath of all beings. (Unmoving, so immortal.) Arnulf Rainer, Das Einzige gegen das Andere catalogue TRR, Galerie Franck, Frankfurt/Main 1952. But when one can say of all his working phases (and here especially of the earliest) that there is a certain unity of perception and invention, inspiration and instinct which is most important to Rainer (and which he always dealt with in his work), then irrespective of all the differences and distinctions, this would be the greatest praise that an artist and child of this century, a century which “brims with reason”, could be awarded. Aus: Otto Breicha: TRRR, Ein Versuch, 1969 Arnulf Rainer: At that time I embellished my name with Trrrrr. (Zetterl interview, Reinhard Priessnitz/Arnulf Rainer, 1969) Wolfgang Kudrnofsky: Arnulf Rainer, during his Hundsgruppen period he called himself „TRRR“, which was intended to express the growl of a dog. (Wolfgang Kudrnofsky: Arnulf Rainer - TRRR ...)