Neo Rauch's paintings are characterized by their distinctive combination of figurative imagery and surrealist abstraction. His enigmatic compositions employ an eccentric iconography of human characters, animals, and hybrids within familiar-looking but imaginary settings. While each work is begun without a preconceived idea of the finished result, there is a uniquely recognizable, visual coherence to his overall oeuvre. Paintings often display palettes of strong, complementary colors, and recurrent subjects include the seamless integration of organic and non-organic elements as well as references to the creative process, music, and manual labor. The artist's treatment of scale is deliberately arbitrary and non-perspectival, and often seems to allude to different time zones or planes of existence.
Read MoreRauch was born in 1960 in Leipzig, where he continues to live and work, and studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst. Since 2000, Rauch's work has been represented by David Zwirner. Rondo marks his seventh gallery presentation and his first at the location in London, on view October 5 through November 12, 2016. Previous solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York include At the Well, 2014, Heilstätten, 2011, Neo Rauch, 2008, Renegaten, 2005, Neo Rauch, 2002, and Neo Rauch, 2000, which marked his United States debut.
Rauch's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions internationally, most recently in 2013 at BOZAR–Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. In 2010, his first major museum survey was co-hosted by the Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. A version of this survey was shown at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw in 2011. Other venues which have presented solo exhibitions over the past decade include the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Germany, 2012; Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany; Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria, both 2011; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, both 2007; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, both 2006; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain, 2005; Albertina, Vienna, 2004; and the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands, 2002.
The Grafikstiftung Neo Rauch opened in June 2012 in the artist's hometown of Aschersleben, Germany. The foundation is dedicated to maintaining and preserving Rauch's entire graphic oeuvre.
Museum collections which hold works by the artist include the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Text courtesy David Zwirner.