(born in Baden near Vienna in 1929)
“Zur Psychologie des Eroberers”, titled, signed, dated TRR 1948 as well as on the other side: “... das kaufmännische Genie”, signed Arnulf Rainer TRRR and in another hand: “St. Georgen/Längsee, Austria, Zur Psychologie des Eroberers”, pencil on packing paper, 57 x 39.5 cm, framed

Full-page illustration and registered:
Arnulf Rainer, Zeichnungen 1947–51, Ausstellungskatalog, Galerie Ariadne, Vienna 1969, plate 15 and a cat. rais. which contains 51 drawings

Provenance:
Private Collection, Lower Austria

Rainer was Austria’s first hippie, as far back as 1949. It was impressed upon me that he never bathed, and that he let his hair grow into a hefty tangle that fitted well with his drawings. Then he shaved his head bald like a convict and deliberately left a few tufts of hair, which also fitted very well with his drawings, and wandered around Klagenfurt with his walking stick and hat as a living embodiment of Freud’s writing. The strangled, buried women in his drawings, the tree stumps and walking stick were of such Freudian origin that they always made an impact on women in particular.
He drew all day in his misshapen, sub-let room without getting out of bed, making atonal noises as his drawings got blacker and blacker.
Viewers talk of quackery and attribute his meteoric rise to the fortunate circumstance of having had such a well-meaning nurse as I standing over his artistic cradle. I think it was a good time for him. New York, February 1969
Maria Lassnig
From the catalogue below