Proportionscollage

This vertical-format work on paper, with five horizontal color bands of differing widths, is a work from Arnulf Rainer’s lesser known early phase. He is interested here in the relationship between colors, surfaces, and their arrangements in space. Studies of proportion, or the attempt to create balance and harmony using proportional relations have been known since antiquity, and they were very popular during the Renaissance, while the Bauhaus and early modernism also took great interest in this theme. And although Rainer was certainly thinking in general terms of real uses for his “proportional arrangements,” such as pictures, music, architecture, and industrial products—the design of numerous areas of real life—these studies were developed without a specific aim in mind. Rainer did not envisage concrete applications and his “Proportion Collage” is thus art that remains self-sufficient, but which also gently suggests opportunities for use in industrial or design contexts. A little later Rainer began to work on a completely new complex. His famous overpaintings of the paintings, drawings, and photographs of other artists remain to this day among his best known works.