(born in Baden near Vienna in 1929)
“Schoß mit Tuch”/”Lap with Cloth”, from Canova concealments, signed, dated A. Rainer 99 on the reverse, black ink, black chalk, acrylic on laser print, 41 x 29.5 cm

Frame on loan

Exhibited and with full-page colour ill. in the catalogue:
Canova/Rainer, Museo Correr, Venice 2003, Edizioni Gabriela Mazzotta, 2003, p. 40

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy

Concealments
Arnulf Rainer
When, after decades, I returned to focus my attention on my youthful obsession with Canova, I suddenly found myself attracted to his women. But the same also happened the other way around. They nodded at me, they fluttered their eyelashes, spoke with me and happily showed me their beautiful bodies. They knew my work, especially the drawings over the works of Caspar David Friedrich I had done in recent years. We grew increasingly familiar. They took to whispering to me that they wished to be veiled by me, just as I had set Friedrich’s landscapes to the music of my mists. They complained of the cold, that they felt too exposed to the view of all and sundry. All this they hinted to me gracefully, as they occasionally appeared to me in colour stained clouds. Were they but half covered, they would cease to feel so ashamed before their many admirers, to freeze so in the chilly halls of museums. For what could be worse than to stand around naked for 150 years in all their polished marble? They yearned to be covered softly by the hand of a painter, with pencil and brush. They wanted to dress in transparent colours, akin to the ones they had so often seen on my works. Thus to shine no more in the piercing sunlight of the south, but in the softness of the moonlight.
For these reasons had they sought me out, taken their courage and vested their confidence in me, that I would not dress them up in any ordinary pop clothing, but enwrap them in cascades of colour that would invest them with dignity and status…
From the aforementioned catalogue