Arnulf Rainer & Art Brut

In its new exhibition, the Arnulf Rainer Museum in Baden near Vienna will be dedicated from October 18, 2025, to the multifaceted connections between Arnulf Rainer and Art Brut – that “raw art” which arises beyond academic conventions and fascinates through its immediacy and expressive power.

Jean Dubuffet, who coined the term Art Brut in 1945, used it to describe a radical counter-movement to the established and commercially driven art world. Art Brut stands for art by self-taught artists, created outside the market and without reference to artistic traditions.

Arnulf Rainer first became aware of Art Brut through Surrealism in the post-war period. The publication of Leo Navratil's book Schizophrenia and Art was particularly influential for him, leading him to the Gugging artists.

From the 1960s onward, Arnulf Rainer became deeply involved with Art Brut. He visited psychiatric clinics and was impressed by its authenticity, immediacy, and inventiveness. In contrast, he often found the "educated" art scene overly reflective. Inspired by this engagement, he conducted experiments with drawing at the University Hospital of Lausanne under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline). These experiments led Rainer to explore body language and performative elements; for example, he painted expressive oil paintings with his bare hands or reworked photographs of himself making faces. This resulted in his characteristic overpaintings of photographs of his own body as well as paintings by old masters.

In the 1970s, Rainer created his Art Brut homages, in which he overpainted works by artists such as Johann Hauser, Jean Dubuffet, Antonin Artaud, and Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern. Not to change them, but to enter into an artistic dialogue.

In 1984, Rainer collaborated directly with other artists on three drawings—two with Fritz Koller and one with Johann Hauser. In 1994, he created 58 reciprocal overpaintings with artists from Gugging: Rainer reworked 27 prints. Johann Fischer, Johann Garber, Johann Hauser, Franz Kamlander, Franz Kernbeis, Johann Korec, Oswald Tschirtner, and August Walla overpainted a total of 31 prints and posters by Arnulf Rainer.

With a circle of artists, including Peter Pongratz, Loys Egg, and Franz Ringel, Arnulf Rainer championed the recognition of Art Brut. It was thanks in no small part to Pongratz's initiative that the first sales exhibition of Gugging artists took place in 1970 at the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna.

From initial encounters, a deep personal relationship with the institution and its artists developed—a connection reflected in the collection and support it provides. To this day, Helmut Zambo is deeply committed to promoting the visibility and recognition of Art Brut. He is a board member of the Gugging Artists' Private Foundation and a board member of the Friends of the House of Artists in Gugging association.

In addition to the Zambo Collection, which forms the core of the exhibition, and private loans, a substantial portion of the Navratil Collection, which Leo Navratil bequeathed to the Lower Austrian State Collections, will be presented for the first time.

Exhibition dates: October 18, 2025 – October 4, 2026

Arnulf Rainer & Art Brut

With two essays by Arnulf Rainer on Art Brut, art historical essays by Nikolaus Kratzer, texts on the artists featured in the exhibition, and an extensive image section with over 100 works.

Edited by Helmut Zambo and Nikolaus Kratzer

Published by Walther und Franz König Bookstore, Cologne. In German and English, 192 pages

Price: €29.90