Overview
- Rainer died on December 18, 2025, at age 96, according to his longtime gallery Thaddaeus Ropac.
- Best known for his Übermalungen, he began overpainting in 1952 and from 1953 applied the method to existing images by others, including Emilio Vedova.
- His practice wrestled with postwar trauma, foreshadowed by his 1951 photo portfolio Perspectives of Destruction addressing Hiroshima, the Holocaust, and wartime ruin.
- Major recognition followed with surveys and participation in Documenta (1972, 1977, 1982), representation of Austria at the 1978 Venice Biennale, and the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1978, alongside exhibitions at leading museums in Berlin, Paris, Venice, and New York.
- He taught at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1981 to 1995, and the Arnulf Rainer Museum in Baden opened in 2009 and marked his 95th birthday with a monographic exhibition in 2024.