Neo Rauch
Leipzig painter of dream-logic scenes where socialist realism and surrealism share a canvas.
Neo Rauch was born in Leipzig in 1960 and lost both parents in a rail accident when he was four weeks old. He trained at the Leipzig academy under Arno Rink and Bernhard Heisig, absorbing the technical grounding of East German socialist realism, and became the central figure of the New Leipzig School after reunification. The paintings are large and highly finished, populated by figures in period costume performing tasks whose purpose is never explained, in landscapes that shift scale and logic mid-picture — the visual grammar of propaganda used to produce something closer to a dream.
The paintings are unique, are frequently very large, and are painted in oil on canvas with a conventional and stable technique, so the condition questions are ordinary ones. Dating and scale are the identifying facts, along with the title, which is usually a single German word. Works on paper — drawings, watercolours and gouaches — are more numerous and are collected in their own right. There is an editioned print output through named publishers. Gallery provenance, principally Eigen und Art in Leipzig and Berlin, is the usual reference.
If you own a work by Neo Rauch
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