(born Baden near Vienna in 1929) Untitled, hand and finger painting, monogrammed R. and on the reverse signed, dated A. Rainer 83/84, oil on cardboard, laid down on wooden panel, 102 x 73.5 cm framed, (K)

Provenance: Private Property, Germany – from the Rainer studio

...After a renewed attempt to improve the works in autumn, they slipped over into the principles of my monochrome overpainting. Dark tones pushed to the forefront. The gestural element completely hidden. However, since this hand and finger painting experiment, whenever I reach a certain level of nervous excitement, I often allow the brush to drop, my hands to dive into the paint, and with two or three fingers I shape, or smear with the whole hand, and mainly on older unfinished fragmentary works which I had not been able to complete. I had discovered a method of my own; I had found a psychic layer within myself which gave me strength to go the whole way and, through an aggressive overworking and act of destruction, to create a better picture from an old half good one. In terms of the purely gestural documentation, that is to say challenging a work with a stroke, with a sensing, with a movement, I feel as if I have not yet achieved this level of concentration. I hope that by next summer I will be again so refuelled that I cook and simmer, foam and quiver, so that with the small to and fro of a lightning-quick hand movement (or even with just one blow) I compel a picture into being. Arnulf Rainer, An einem Sonntag im Sommer 1973 war es soweit- Gestische Handmalerei (1974)

Compare: Arnulf Rainer, Verdeckt-Entdeckt, Ulysses, Vienna 1984, page 107–111