Arnulf Rainer valuation
Paints over things — photographs, Old Masters, death masks and his own face.
Arnulf Rainer was born at Baden near Vienna in 1929, walked out of two art schools within days, and arrived early at the operation he performed for the rest of his life: Ubermalung, overpainting.
What a work by Arnulf Rainer is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Bio
Arnulf Rainer was born at Baden near Vienna in 1929, walked out of two art schools within days, and arrived early at the operation he performed for the rest of his life: Ubermalung, overpainting. He takes an existing image — a photograph of himself pulling a face, a reproduction of a crucifixion, a death mask, a medical illustration, a Van Gogh — and paints over it, sometimes almost obliterating it, leaving just enough visible to make the covering an act rather than a surface. He was associated with the Vienna Actionists' circle without belonging to it, and a museum devoted to his work opened at Baden in 2009.
The market is principally Austrian and German. Face Farces and Body Poses, the overpainted photographs of himself from the late 1960s and 1970s, are the most sought group, together with the black and cross paintings. Because the works combine oil, oil crayon and pastel over photographic paper or printed reproductions, they present layered conservation problems and are frequently unfixed; surfaces smudge and cannot be cleaned. Rainer was prolific and the supply of later work is substantial. There is a very large printed output in etching and lithography.
At a glance
- Born
- 8 December 1929, Baden
- Died
- 18 December 2025, Vienna
- Movements
- Viennese Actionism, Surrealism
More on Wikipedia.
The Hundsgruppe, Venice and the Academy
In 1950 Rainer founded the Hundsgruppe with Ernst Fuchs, Arik Brauer and Josef Mikl. He received the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1978 and represented Austria at the Venice Biennale in 1978 and 1980, and from 1981 to 1995 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where he had abandoned his own studies after three days.
His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York as well as the museum in Baden. He died in December 2025, aged 96. An overpainting is unique even when the image beneath is a print or a photograph, and it should be identified by its title, date and the image it covers.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
