Übermalung violett

The perpetual sensation of the fragmentary, the half-finished and the incomplete led Arnulf Rainer in 1954 to begin with overpainting his works. The paint is applied little by little onto the original picture, which is extinguished as it were by a thickening and impermeable coating. Only the title “Overpainting Purple” suggests that something lies beneath, reminds us on the act of overpainting. The blank space of the white grounded canvas also testifies to the existence of a dimension of picture underneath without showing what has effectively been covered. The constant revision and correction, the creative process which goes as far as virtually blackening out the picture evokes a contemplative mood. By extinguishing all that is inconsistent, lost in detail and restless the painting is gradually shrouded in a veil of silence. Rainer turns on its head the formal principles of painting, pushes them to the limit yet never steps beyond. He enters in dialogue with the “before” which although invisible always remains tangible: “This is a negative theology; so to speak, one is in search of what can only be grasped somehow by negative theology.”