BOOK: Neo Rauch, Phaidon Publications

Widely celebrated as one of the most influential figurative painters working today, Neo Rauch is known for richly colored and elaborate paintings that contain a repertoire of invented characters, settings, objects, and motifs. At once realistic and familiar, enigmatic and inscrutable, his paintings often hint at broader narratives and histories—seemingly reconnecting with the artistic traditions of realism—yet they are dreamlike and frequently contain disparate and overlapping spaces and forms. A leading force of the Leipzig School, the group of artists that emerged from East Germany in the early 1990s after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rauch quickly established himself internationally through his large canvases featuring a crossover between Surrealism and popular imagery. Characterized by a bright acidic palette, Rauch’s ambiguous landscapes are populated by spatially connected, alienated figures conjuring a mysterious atmosphere of distorted nostalgia and failed Utopia. The career-spanning and signed edition “Neo Rauch” by Phaidon Publications was made in close collaboration with the artist, showcasing Rauch’s work alongside essays and texts that illuminate his work and career.-Dimitris Lempesis