Neo Rauch

The work of contemporary artist Neo Rauch uniquely combines personal and political history to explore the legacy of Socialist Realism and the effects of industrial contemporary life through a distinctively Surrealist visual lens. Many of his works recall Giorgio de Chirico’s Metaphysical paintings that capture the simultaneous alienation and dynamism of ever-changing urban life. Neo Rauch has captivated collectors and art historians with his fluctuation between East and West, landscape and the manmade, and abstraction and figuration.

Born in East Germany in 1960, Rauch was raised by his grandparents in Aschersleben, after his parents died in a train accident when he was one month old. He attended the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts, and after the fall of the GDR, he worked as assistant to Sighard Gille and his former Professor Arno Rink at the Leipziger Akademie until 1998. He and many of his classmates including Martin Kobe, David Schnell and Tilo Baumgärtel made up the New Leipzig School within the context of post-reunified Germany, although most of its members refuse such classification. Rauch often collaborates with fellow artists, including his wife Rosa Loy, with whom he shares a studio in an abandoned cotton mill.

Rauch’s work is held in the permanent collections of major museums of contemporary art around the world including the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the Goetz Collection, Munich; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Gemeentemuseum, the Hague, the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and many others. He has been awarded a wide array of awards and accolades including the 1992 Renta-Preis, Nuremberg, the 2002 Vincent Award, the Netherlands, the 2005 Kunstpreis Finkenwerder, and the 2012 Order of Merit of Saxony-Anhalt. Rauch is one of the most expensive living German artists: his painting Gut Gut sold at Sotheby’s for $1.2 million in 2016.